John Lothrop Motley - "The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1572"

by Robert Louis Stevenson - "The Pocket R.L.S."

Constant - "Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, V9"

Christian Rosencreutz - "Les Noces Chimiques"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

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Books: The Man in the Iron Mask

A >> Alexandre Dumas, Pere >> The Man in the Iron Mask




"My God!" said he, "he does not stir - he has fainted!"

But D'Artagnan was mistaken. Mousqueton was dead! Dead, like the dog
who, having lost his master, crawls back to die upon his cloak.


Chapter LVI:
The Old Age of Athos.

While these affairs were separating forever the four musketeers, formerly
bound together in a manner that seemed indissoluble, Athos, left alone
after the departure of Raoul, began to pay his tribute to that foretaste
of death which is called the absence of those we love. Back in his house
at Blois, no longer having even Grimaud to receive a poor smile as he
passed through the parterre, Athos daily felt the decline of vigor of a
nature which for so long a time had seemed impregnable. Age, which had
been kept back by the presence of the beloved object, arrived with that
_cortege_ of pains and inconveniences, which grows by geometrical
accretion. Athos had no longer his son to induce him to walk firmly,
with head erect, as a good example; he had no longer, in those brilliant
eyes of the young man, an ever-ardent focus at which to kindle anew the
fire of his looks. And then, must it be said, that nature, exquisite in
tenderness and reserve, no longer finding anything to understand its
feelings, gave itself up to grief with all the warmth of common natures
when they yield to joy. The Comte de la Fere, who had remained a young
man to his sixty-second year; the warrior who had preserved his strength
in spite of fatigue; his freshness of mind in spite of misfortune, his
mild serenity of soul and body in spite of Milady, in spite of Mazarin,
in spite of La Valliere; Athos had become an old man in a week, from the
moment at which he lost the comfort of his later youth. Still handsome,
though bent, noble, but sad, he sought, since his solitude, the deeper
glades where sunshine scarcely penetrated. He discontinued all the
mighty exercises he had enjoyed through life, when Raoul was no longer
with him. The servants, accustomed to see him stirring with the dawn at
all seasons, were astonished to hear seven o'clock strike before their
master quitted his bed. Athos remained in bed with a book under his
pillow - but he did not sleep, neither did he read. Remaining in bed
that he might no longer have to carry his body, he allowed his soul and
spirit to wander from their envelope and return to his son, or to God.

Transcriber's note: In some editions, "in spite of Milady" reads "in
spite of malady". - JB

His people were sometimes terrified to see him, for hours together,
absorbed in silent reverie, mute and insensible; he no longer heard the
timid step of the servant who came to the door of his chamber to watch
the sleeping or waking of his master. It often occurred that he forgot
the day had half passed away, that the hours for the two first meals were
gone by. Then he was awakened. He rose, descended to his shady walk,
then came out a little into the sun, as though to partake of its warmth
for a minute in memory of his absent child. And then the dismal
monotonous walk recommenced, until, exhausted, he regained the chamber
and his bed, his domicile by choice. For several days the comte did not
speak a single word. He refused to receive the visits that were paid
him, and during the night he was seen to relight his lamp and pass long
hours in writing, or examining parchments.

Athos wrote one of these letters to Vannes, another to Fontainebleau;
they remained without answers. We know why: Aramis had quitted France,
and D'Artagnan was traveling from Nantes to Paris, from Paris to
Pierrefonds. His _valet de chambre_ observed that he shortened his walk
every day by several turns. The great alley of limes soon became too
long for feet that used to traverse it formerly a hundred times a day.
The comte walked feebly as far as the middle trees, seated himself upon a
mossy bank that sloped towards a sidewalk, and there waited the return of
his strength, or rather the return of night. Very shortly a hundred
steps exhausted him. At length Athos refused to rise at all; he declined
all nourishment, and his terrified people, although he did not complain,
although he wore a smile upon his lips, although he continued to speak
with his sweet voice - his people went to Blois in search of the ancient
physician of the late Monsieur, and brought him to the Comte de la Fere
in such a fashion that he could see the comte without being himself
seen. For this purpose, they placed him in a closet adjoining the
chamber of the patient, and implored him not to show himself, for fear of
displeasing their master, who had not asked for a physician. The doctor
obeyed. Athos was a sort of model for the gentlemen of the country; the
Blaisois boasted of possessing this sacred relic of French glory. Athos
was a great seigneur compared with such nobles as the king improvised by
touching with his artificial scepter the parched-up trunks of the
heraldic trees of the province.

People respected Athos, we say, and they loved him. The physician could
not bear to see his people weep, to see flock round him the poor of the
canton, to whom Athos had so often given life and consolation by his kind
words and his charities. He examined, therefore, from the depths of his
hiding-place, the nature of that mysterious malady which bent and aged
more mortally every day a man but lately so full of life and a desire to
live. He remarked upon the cheeks of Athos the hectic hue of fever,
which feeds upon itself; slow fever, pitiless, born in a fold of the
heart, sheltering itself behind that rampart, growing from the suffering
it engenders, at once cause and effect of a perilous situation. The
comte spoke to nobody; he did not even talk to himself. His thought
feared noise; it approached to that degree of over-excitement which
borders upon ecstasy. Man thus absorbed, though he does not yet belong
to God, already appertains no longer to the earth. The doctor remained
for several hours studying this painful struggle of the will against
superior power; he was terrified at seeing those eyes always fixed, ever
directed on some invisible object; was terrified at the monotonous
beating of that heart from which never a sigh arose to vary the
melancholy state; for often pain becomes the hope of the physician. Half
a day passed away thus. The doctor formed his resolution like a brave
man; he issued suddenly from his place of retreat, and went straight up
to Athos, who beheld him without evincing more surprise than if he had
understood nothing of the apparition.

"Monsieur le comte, I crave your pardon," said the doctor, coming up to
the patient with open arms; "but I have a reproach to make you - you
shall hear me." And he seated himself by the pillow of Athos, who had
great trouble in rousing himself from his preoccupation.

"What is the matter, doctor?" asked the comte, after a silence.

"The matter is, you are ill, monsieur, and have had no advice."

"I! ill!" said Athos, smiling.

"Fever, consumption, weakness, decay, monsieur le comte!"

"Weakness!" replied Athos; "is it possible? I do not get up."

"Come, come! monsieur le comte, no subterfuges; you are a good Christian?"

"I hope so," said Athos.

"Is it your wish to kill yourself?"

"Never, doctor."

"Well! monsieur, you are in a fair way of doing so. Thus to remain is
suicide. Get well! monsieur le comte, get well!"

"Of what? Find the disease first. For my part, I never knew myself
better; never did the sky appear more blue to me; never did I take more
care of my flowers."

"You have a hidden grief."

"Concealed! - not at all; the absence of my son, doctor; that is my
malady, and I do not conceal it."

"Monsieur le comte, your son lives, he is strong, he has all the future
before him - the future of men of merit, of his race; live for him - "

"But I do live, doctor; oh! be satisfied of that," added he, with a
melancholy smile; "for as long as Raoul lives, it will be plainly known,
for as long as he lives, I shall live."

"What do you say?"

"A very simple thing. At this moment, doctor, I leave life suspended
within me. A forgetful, dissipated, indifferent life would be beyond my
strength, now I have no longer Raoul with me. You do not ask the lamp to
burn when the match has not illumed the flame; do not ask me to live
amidst noise and merriment. I vegetate, I prepare myself, I wait. Look,
doctor; remember those soldiers we have so often seen together at the
ports, where they were waiting to embark; lying down, indifferent, half
on one element, half on the other; they were neither at the place where
the sea was going to carry them, nor at the place the earth was going to
lose them; baggage prepared, minds on the stretch, arms stacked - they
waited. I repeat it, the word is the one which paints my present life.
Lying down like the soldiers, my ear on the stretch for the report that
may reach me, I wish to be ready to set out at the first summons. Who
will make me that summons? life or death? God or Raoul? My baggage is
packed, my soul is prepared, I await the signal - I wait, doctor, I wait!"

The doctor knew the temper of that mind; he appreciated the strength of
that body; he reflected for the moment, told himself that words were
useless, remedies absurd, and left the chateau, exhorting Athos's
servants not to quit him for a moment.

The doctor being gone, Athos evinced neither anger nor vexation at having
been disturbed. He did not even desire that all letters that came should
be brought to him directly. He knew very well that every distraction
which should arise would be a joy, a hope, which his servants would have
paid with their blood to procure him. Sleep had become rare. By intense
thinking, Athos forgot himself, for a few hours at most, in a reverie
most profound, more obscure than other people would have called a dream.
The momentary repose which this forgetfulness thus gave the body, still
further fatigued the soul, for Athos lived a double life during these
wanderings of his understanding. One night, he dreamt that Raoul was
dressing himself in a tent, to go upon an expedition commanded by M. de
Beaufort in person. The young man was sad; he clasped his cuirass
slowly, and slowly he girded on his sword.

"What is the matter?" asked his father, tenderly.

"What afflicts me is the death of Porthos, ever so dear a friend,"
replied Raoul. "I suffer here the grief you soon will feel at home."

And the vision disappeared with the slumber of Athos. At daybreak one of
his servants entered his master's apartment, and gave him a letter which
came from Spain.

"The writing of Aramis," thought the comte; and he read.

"Porthos is dead!" cried he, after the first lines. "Oh! Raoul, Raoul!
thanks! thou keepest thy promise, thou warnest me!"

And Athos, seized with a mortal sweat, fainted in his bed, without any
other cause than weakness.


Chapter LVII:
Athos's Vision.

When this fainting of Athos had ceased, the comte, almost ashamed of
having given way before this superior natural event, dressed himself and
ordered his horse, determined to ride to Blois, to open more certain
correspondences with either Africa, D'Artagnan, or Aramis. In fact, this
letter from Aramis informed the Comte de la Fere of the bad success of
the expedition of Belle-Isle. It gave him sufficient details of the
death of Porthos to move the tender and devoted heart of Athos to its
innermost fibers. Athos wished to go and pay his friend Porthos a last
visit. To render this honor to his companion in arms, he meant to send
to D'Artagnan, to prevail upon him to recommence the painful voyage to
Belle-Isle, to accomplish in his company that sad pilgrimage to the tomb
of the giant he had so much loved, then to return to his dwelling to obey
that secret influence which was conducting him to eternity by a
mysterious road. But scarcely had his joyous servants dressed their
master, whom they saw with pleasure preparing for a journey which might
dissipate his melancholy; scarcely had the comte's gentlest horse been
saddled and brought to the door, when the father of Raoul felt his head
become confused, his legs give way, and he clearly perceived the
impossibility of going one step further. He ordered himself to be
carried into the sun; they laid him upon his bed of moss where he passed
a full hour before he could recover his spirits. Nothing could be more
natural than this weakness after then inert repose of the latter days.
Athos took a _bouillon_, to give him strength, and bathed his dried lips
in a glassful of the wine he loved the best - that old Anjou wine
mentioned by Porthos in his admirable will. Then, refreshed, free in
mind, he had his horse brought again; but only with the aid of his
servants was he able painfully to climb into the saddle. He did not go a
hundred paces; a shivering seized him again at the turning of the road.

"This is very strange!" said he to his _valet de chambre_, who
accompanied him.

"Let us stop, monsieur - I conjure you!" replied the faithful servant;
"how pale you are getting!"

"That will not prevent my pursuing my route, now I have once started,"
replied the comte. And he gave his horse his head again. But suddenly,
the animal, instead of obeying the thought of his master, stopped. A
movement, of which Athos was unconscious, had checked the bit.

"Something," said Athos, "wills that I should go no further. Support
me," added he, stretching out his arms; "quick! come closer! I feel my
muscles relax - I shall fall from my horse."

The valet had seen the movement made by his master at the moment he
received the order. He went up to him quickly, received the comte in his
arms, and as they were not yet sufficiently distant from the house for
the servants, who had remained at the door to watch their master's
departure, not to perceive the disorder in the usually regular proceeding
of the comte, the valet called his comrades by gestures and voice, and
all hastened to his assistance. Athos had gone but a few steps on his
return, when he felt himself better again. His strength seemed to revive
and with it the desire to go to Blois. He made his horse turn round:
but, at the animal's first steps, he sunk again into a state of torpor
and anguish.

"Well! decidedly," said he, "it is _willed_ that I should stay at home."
His people flocked around him; they lifted him from his horse, and
carried him as quickly as possible into the house. Everything was
prepared in his chamber, and they put him to bed.

"You will be sure to remember," said he, disposing himself to sleep,
"that I expect letters from Africa this very day."

"Monsieur will no doubt hear with pleasure that Blaisois's son is gone on
horseback, to gain an hour over the courier of Blois," replied his _valet
de chambre_.

"Thank you," replied Athos, with his placid smile.

The comte fell asleep, but his disturbed slumber resembled torture rather
than repose. The servant who watched him saw several times the
expression of internal suffering shadowed on his features. Perhaps Athos
was dreaming.

The day passed away. Blaisois's son returned; the courier had brought no
news. The comte reckoned the minutes with despair; he shuddered when
those minutes made an hour. The idea that he was forgotten seized him
once, and brought on a fearful pang of the heart. Everybody in the house
had given up all hopes of the courier - his hour had long passed. Four
times the express sent to Blois had repeated his journey, and there was
nothing to the address of the comte. Athos knew that the courier only
arrived once a week. Here, then, was a delay of eight mortal days to be
endured. He commenced the night in this painful persuasion. All that a
sick man, irritated by suffering, can add of melancholy suppositions to
probabilities already gloomy, Athos heaped up during the early hours of
this dismal night. The fever rose: it invaded the chest, where the fire
soon caught, according to the expression of the physician, who had been
brought back from Blois by Blaisois at his last journey. Soon it gained
the head. The physician made two successive bleedings, which dislodged
it for the time, but left the patient very weak, and without power of
action in anything but his brain. And yet this redoubtable fever had
ceased. It besieged with its last palpitations the tense extremities; it
ended by yielding as midnight struck.

The physician, seeing the incontestable improvement, returned to Blois,
after having ordered some prescriptions, and declared that the comte was
saved. Then commenced for Athos a strange, indefinable state. Free to
think, his mind turned towards Raoul, that beloved son. His imagination
penetrated the fields of Africa in the environs of Gigelli, where M. de
Beaufort must have landed with his army. A waste of gray rocks, rendered
green in certain parts by the waters of the sea, when it lashed the shore
in storms and tempest. Beyond, the shore, strewed over with these rocks
like gravestones, ascended, in form of an amphitheater among mastic-trees
and cactus, a sort of small town, full of smoke, confused noises, and
terrified movements. All of a sudden, from the bosom of this smoke arose
a flame, which succeeded, creeping along the houses, in covering the
entire surface of the town, and increased by degrees, uniting in its red
and angry vortices tears, screams, and supplicating arms outstretched to
Heaven.

There was, for a moment, a frightful _pele-mele_ of timbers falling to
pieces, of swords broken, of stones calcined, trees burnt and
disappearing. It was a strange thing that in this chaos, in which Athos
distinguished raised arms, in which he heard cries, sobs, and groans, he
did not see one human figure. The cannon thundered at a distance,
musketry madly barked, the sea moaned, flocks made their escape, bounding
over the verdant slope. But not a soldier to apply the match to the
batteries of cannon, not a sailor to assist in maneuvering the fleet, not
a shepherd in charge of the flocks. After the ruin of the village, the
destruction of the forts which dominated it, a ruin and destruction
magically wrought without the co-operation of a single human being, the
flames were extinguished, the smoke began to subside, then diminished in
intensity, paled and disappeared entirely. Night then came over the
scene; night dark upon the earth, brilliant in the firmament. The large
blazing stars which spangled the African sky glittered and gleamed
without illuminating anything.

A long silence ensued, which gave, for a moment, repose to the troubled
imagination of Athos; and as he felt that that which he saw was not
terminated, he applied more attentively the eyes of his understanding on
the strange spectacle which his imagination had presented. This
spectacle was soon continued for him. A mild pale moon rose behind the
declivities of the coast, streaking at first the undulating ripples of
the sea, which appeared to have calmed after the roaring it had sent
forth during the vision of Athos - the moon, we say, shed its diamonds
and opals upon the briers and bushes of the hills. The gray rocks, so
many silent and attentive phantoms, appeared to raise their heads to
examine likewise the field of battle by the light of the moon, and Athos
perceived that the field, empty during the combat, was now strewn with
fallen bodies.

An inexpressible shudder of fear and horror seized his soul as he
recognized the white and blue uniforms of the soldiers of Picardy, with
their long pikes and blue handles, and muskets marked with the _fleur-de-
lis_ on the butts. When he saw all the gaping wounds, looking up to the
bright heavens as if to demand back of them the souls to which they had
opened a passage, - when he saw the slaughtered horses, stiff, their
tongues hanging out at one side of their mouths, sleeping in the shiny
blood congealed around them, staining their furniture and their manes, -
when he saw the white horse of M. de Beaufort, with his head beaten to
pieces, in the first ranks of the dead, Athos passed a cold hand over his
brow, which he was astonished not to find burning. He was convinced by
this touch that he was present, as a spectator, without delirium's
dreadful aid, the day after the battle fought upon the shores of Gigelli
by the army of the expedition, which he had seen leave the coast of
France and disappear upon the dim horizon, and of which he had saluted
with thought and gesture the last cannon-shot fired by the duke as a
signal of farewell to his country.

Who can paint the mortal agony with which his soul followed, like a
vigilant eye, these effigies of clay-cold soldiers, and examined them,
one after the other, to see if Raoul slept among them? Who can express
the intoxication of joy with which Athos bowed before God, and thanked
Him for not having seen him he sought with so much fear among the dead?
In fact, fallen in their ranks, stiff, icy, the dead, still recognizable
with ease, seemed to turn with complacency towards the Comte de la Fere,
to be the better seen by him, during his sad review. But yet, he was
astonished, while viewing all these bodies, not to perceive the
survivors. To such a point did the illusion extend, that this vision was
for him a real voyage made by the father into Africa, to obtain more
exact information respecting his son.

Fatigued, therefore, with having traversed seas and continents, he sought
repose under one of the tents sheltered behind a rock, on the top of
which floated the white _fleur-de-lised_ pennon. He looked for a soldier
to conduct him to the tent of M. de Beaufort. Then, while his eye was
wandering over the plain, turning on all sides, he saw a white form
appear behind the scented myrtles. This figure was clothed in the
costume of an officer; it held in its hand a broken sword; it advanced
slowly towards Athos, who, stopping short and fixing his eyes upon it,
neither spoke nor moved, but wished to open his arms, because in this
silent officer he had already recognized Raoul. The comte attempted to
utter a cry, but it was stifled in his throat. Raoul, with a gesture,
directed him to be silent, placing his finger on his lips and drawing
back by degrees, without Athos being able to see his legs move. The
comte, still paler than Raoul, followed his son, painfully traversing
briers and bushes, stones and ditches, Raoul not appearing to touch the
earth, no obstacle seeming to impede the lightness of his march. The
comte, whom the inequalities of the path fatigued, soon stopped,
exhausted. Raoul still continued to beckon him to follow him. The
tender father, to whom love restored strength, made a last effort, and
climbed the mountain after the young man, who attracted him by gesture
and by smile.

At length he gained the crest of the hill, and saw, thrown out in black,
upon the horizon whitened by the moon, the aerial form of Raoul. Athos
reached forth his hand to get closer to his beloved son upon the plateau,
and the latter also stretched out his; but suddenly, as if the young man
had been drawn away in his own despite, still retreating, he left the
earth, and Athos saw the clear blue sky shine between the feet of his
child and the ground of the hill. Raoul rose insensibly into the void,
smiling, still calling with gesture: - he departed towards heaven. Athos
uttered a cry of tenderness and terror. He looked below again. He saw a
camp destroyed, and all those white bodies of the royal army, like so
many motionless atoms. And, then, raising his head, he saw the figure of
his son still beckoning him to climb the mystic void.


Chapter LVIII:
The Angel of Death.

Athos was at this part of his marvelous vision, when the charm was
suddenly broken by a great noise rising from the outer gates. A horse
was heard galloping over the hard gravel of the great alley, and the
sound of noisy and animated conversations ascended to the chamber in
which the comte was dreaming. Athos did not stir from the place he
occupied; he scarcely turned his head towards the door to ascertain the
sooner what these noises could be. A heavy step ascended the stairs; the
horse, which had recently galloped, departed slowly towards the stables.
Great hesitation appeared in the steps, which by degrees approached the
chamber. A door was opened, and Athos, turning a little towards the part
of the room the noise came from, cried, in a weak voice:

"It is a courier from Africa, is it not?"

"No, monsieur le comte," replied a voice which made the father of Raoul
start upright in his bed.

"Grimaud!" murmured he. And the sweat began to pour down his face.
Grimaud appeared in the doorway. It was no longer the Grimaud we have
seen, still young with courage and devotion, when he jumped the first
into the boat destined to convey Raoul de Bragelonne to the vessels of
the royal fleet. 'Twas now a stern and pale old man, his clothes covered
with dust, and hair whitened by old age. He trembled whilst leaning
against the door-frame, and was near falling on seeing, by the light of
the lamps, the countenance of his master. These two men who had lived so
long together in a community of intelligence, and whose eyes, accustomed
to economize expressions, knew how to say so many things silently - these
two old friends, one as noble as the other in heart, if they were unequal
in fortune and birth, remained tongue-tied whilst looking at each other.
By the exchange of a single glance they had just read to the bottom of
each other's hearts. The old servitor bore upon his countenance the
impression of a grief already old, the outward token of a grim
familiarity with woe. He appeared to have no longer in use more than a
single version of his thoughts. As formerly he was accustomed not to
speak much, he was now accustomed not to smile at all. Athos read at a
glance all these shades upon the visage of his faithful servant, and in
the same tone he would have employed to speak to Raoul in his dream: