THE DEATH OF A TITAN.
At the moment when Porthos, more accustomed to the darkness than all
these men coming from open daylight, was looking round him to see if in
this night Aramis were not making him some signal, he felt his arm
gently touched, and a voice low as a breath murmured in his ear, "Come."
"Oh!" said Porthos.
"Hush!" said Aramis, if possible, still more softly.
And amid the noise of the third brigade, which continued to advance,
amid the imprecations of the guards left alive, of the dying, rattling
their last sigh, Aramis and Porthos glided imperceptibly along the
granite walls of the cavern. Aramis led Porthos into the last but one
compartment, and showed him, in a hollow of the rocky wall, a barrel of
powder weighing from seventy to eighty pounds, to which he had just
attached a match. "My friend," said he to Porthos, "you will take this
barrel, the match of which I am going to set fire to, and throw it amid
our enemies; can you do so?"
"Parbleu!" replied Porthos; and he lifted the barrel with one hand.
"Light it!"
"Stop," said Aramis, "till they are all massed together, and then, my
Jupiter, hurl your thunderbolt among-them."
"Light it," repeated Porthos.
"On my part," continued Aramis, "I will join our Bretons, and help them
to get the canoe to the sea. I will wait for you on the shore; launch it
strongly, and hasten to us."
"Light it," said Porthos a third time.
"But do you understand me?"
"Parbleu!" said Porthos again, with laughter that he did not even
attempt to restrain; "when a thing is explained to me I understand it;
begone, and give me the light."
Aramis gave the burning match to Porthos, who held out his arm to him,
his hands being engaged. Aramis pressed the arm of Porthos with both his
hands, and fell back to the outlet of the cavern where the three rowers
awaited him.
Porthos, left alone, applied the spark bravely to the match. The
spark--a feeble spark, first principle of a conflagration--shone in the
darkness like a fire-fly, then was deadened against the match which it
inflamed. Porthos enlivened the flame with his breath. The smoke was a
little dispersed, and by the light of the sparkling match objects might,
for two seconds, be distinguished. It was a short but a splendid
spectacle, that of this giant, pale, bloody, his countenance lighted by
the fire of the match burning in surrounding darkness! The soldiers saw
him--they saw the barrel he held in his hand--they at once understood
what was going to happen. Then, these men, already filled with terror at
the sight of what had been accomplished--filled with terror at thinking
of what was going to be accomplished--threw forth together one shriek of
agony. Some endeavored to fly, but they encountered the third brigade
which barred their passage; others mechanically took aim and attempted
to fire their discharged muskets; others fell upon their knees. Two or
three officers cried out to Porthos to promise him his liberty if he
would spare their lives. The lieutenant of the third brigade commanded
his men to fire; but the guards had before them their terrified
companions, who served as a living rampart for Porthos. We have said
that the light produced by the spark and the match did not last more
than two seconds; but during these two seconds this is what it
illumined--in the first place, the giant, enlarged in the darkness;
then, at ten paces from him, a heap of bleeding bodies, crushed,
mutilated, in the midst of whom still lived some last struggle of agony,
which lifted the mass as a last respiration raises the sides of a
shapeless monster expiring in the night. Every breath of Porthos, while
enlivening the match, sent toward this heap of bodies a sulphureous hue
mingled with streaks of purple. In addition to this principal group,
scattered about the grotto, as the chance of death or the surprise of
the blow had stretched them, some isolated bodies seemed to threaten by
their gaping wounds. Above the ground, soaked by pools of blood, rose,
heavy and sparkling, the short, thick pillars of the cavern, of which
the strongly marked shades threw out the luminous particles. And all
this was seen by the tremulous light of a match attached to a barrel of
powder, that is to say, a torch which, while throwing a light upon the
dead past, showed the death to come.
As I have said, this spectacle did not last above two seconds. During
this short space of time, an officer of the third brigade got together
eight men armed with muskets, and, through an opening, ordered them to
fire upon Porthos. But they who received the order to fire trembled so
that three guards fell by the discharge, and the five other balls went
hissing to splinter the vault, plow the ground, or indent the sides of
the cavern.
A burst of laughter replied to this volley; then the arm of the giant
swung round; then was seen to pass through the air, like a falling star,
the train of fire. The barrel, hurled a distance of thirty feet, cleared
the barricade of the dead bodies, and fell amid a group of shrieking
soldiers, who threw themselves on their faces. The officer had followed
the brilliant train in the air; he endeavored to precipitate himself
upon the barrel and tear out the match before it reached the powder it
contained. Useless devotedness! The air had made the flame attached to
the conductor more active; the match, which at rest might have burned
five minutes, was consumed in thirty seconds, and the infernal work
exploded. Furious vortices, hissings of sulphur and niter, devouring
ravages of the fire which caught to objects, the terrible thunder of the
explosion, this is what the second which followed the two seconds we
have described, disclosed in that cavern, equal in horrors to a cavern
of demons. The rock split like planks of deal under the ax. A jet of
fire, smoke, and débris sprang up from the middle of the grotto,
enlarging as it mounted. The large walls of silex tottered and fell upon
the sand, and the sand itself, an instrument of pain when launched from
its hardened bed, riddled the face with its myriads of cutting atoms.
Cries, howlings, imprecations, and existences--all were extinguished in
one immense crash.
The three first compartments became a gulf into which fell back again,
according to its weight, every vegetable, mineral, or human fragment.
Then the lighter sand and ashes fell in their turns, stretching like a
gray winding-sheet and smoking over these dismal funerals. And now seek
in this burning tomb, in this subterraneous volcano, seek for the king's
guards with their blue coats laced with silver. Seek for the officers
brilliant in gold; seek for the arms upon which they depended for their
defense; seek for the stones that have killed them, the ground that has
borne them. One single man has made of all this a chaos more confused,
more shapeless, more terrible than the chaos which existed an hour
before God had created the world. There remained nothing of the three
compartments--nothing by which God could have known His own work. As to
Porthos, after having hurled the barrel of powder amid his enemies, he
had fled as Aramis had directed him to do, and had gained the last
apartment, into which air, light, and sunshine penetrated through the
opening. Therefore, scarcely had he turned the angle which separated the
third compartment from the fourth, than he perceived at a hundred paces
from him the bark dancing on the waves; there were his friends, there
was liberty, there was life after victory. Six more of his formidable
strides, and he would be out of the vault; out of the vault! two or
three vigorous springs, and he would reach the canoe. Suddenly he felt
his knees give way; his knees appeared powerless, his legs to yield
under him.
"Oh! oh!" murmured he, "there is my fatigue seizing me again! I can walk
no further! What is this!"
Aramis perceived him through the opening, and unable to conceive what
could induce him to stop thus, "Come on, Porthos! come on," cried he;
"come quickly!"
"Oh!" replied the giant, making an effort which acted upon every muscle
of his body, "oh! but I cannot!" While saying these words he fell upon
his knees, but with his robust hands he clung to the rocks, and raised
himself up again.
"Quick! quick!" repeated Aramis, bending forward toward the shore, as if
to draw Porthos toward him with his arms.
"Here I am," stammered Porthos, collecting all his strength to make one
step more.
"In the name of Heaven, Porthos, make haste! the barrel will blow up!"
"Make haste, monseigneur!" shouted the Bretons to Porthos, who was
floundering as in a dream.
But there was no longer time; the explosion resounded, the earth gaped,
the smoke which rushed through the large fissures obscured the sky; the
sea flowed back as if driven by the blast of fire which darted from the
grotto as if from the jaws of a gigantic chimera; the reflux carried the
bark out twenty toises; the rocks cracked to their base, and separated
like blocks beneath the operation of wedges; a portion of the vault was
carried up toward heaven, as if by rapid currents; the rose-colored and
green fire of the sulphur, the black lava of the argillaceous
liquefactions clashed and combated for an instant beneath a majestic
dome of smoke; then, at first oscillated, then declined, then fell
successively the long angles of rock which the violence of the explosion
had not been able to uproot from their bed of ages; they bowed to each
other like grave and slow old men, then prostrating themselves, embedded
forever in their dusty tomb.
This frightful shock seemed to restore to Porthos the strength he had
lost: he arose, himself a giant among these giants. But at the moment he
was flying between the double hedge of granite phantoms, these latter,
which were no longer supported by the corresponding links, began to roll
with a crash around this Titan, who looked as if precipitated from
heaven amid rocks which he had just been launching at it. Porthos felt
the earth beneath his feet shaken by this long rending. He extended his
vast hands to the right and left to repulse the falling rocks. A
gigantic block was held back by each of his extended hands; he bent his
head, and a third granite mass sank between his two shoulders. For an
instant the arms of Porthos had given way, but the Hercules united all
his forces, and the two walls of the prison in which he was buried fell
back slowly and gave him place. For an instant he appeared in this frame
of granite like the ancient angel of chaos, but in pushing back the
lateral rocks, he lost his point of support for the monolith which
weighed upon his strong shoulders, and the monolith, lying upon him with
all its weight, brought the giant down upon his knees. The lateral
rocks, for an instant pushed back, drew together again, and added their
weight to the primitive weight which would have been sufficient to crush
ten men. The giant fell without crying for help; he fell while answering
Aramis with words of encouragement and hope, for, thanks to the powerful
arch of his hands, for an instant, he might believe that, like
Enceladus, he should shake off the triple load. But, by degrees, Aramis
saw the block sink: the hands strung for an instant, the arms stiffened
for a last effort, gave way, the extended shoulders sank wounded and
torn, and the rock continued to lower gradually.
"Porthos! Porthos!" cried Aramis, tearing his hair. "Porthos! where are
you? Speak!"
"There, there!" murmured Porthos, with a voice growing evidently weaker,
"patience! patience!"
Scarcely had he pronounced these words, when the impulse of the fall
augmented the weight; the enormous rock sank down, pressed by the two
others which sank in from the sides, and, as it were, swallowed up
Porthos in a sepulcher of broken stones. On hearing the dying voice of
his friend, Aramis had sprung to land. Two of the Bretons followed him,
with each a lever in his hand--one being sufficient to take care of the
bark. The last rattles of the valiant struggler guided them amid the
ruins. Aramis, animated, active, and young as at twenty, sprang toward
the triple mass, and with his hands, delicate as those of a woman,
raised by a miracle of vigor a corner of the immense sepulcher of
granite. Then he caught a glimpse, in the darkness of that grave, of the
still brilliant eye of his friend, to whom the momentary lifting of the
mass restored that moment of respiration. The two men came rushing up,
grasped their iron levers, united their triple strength, not merely to
raise it, but to sustain it. All was useless. The three men slowly gave
way with cries of grief, and the rough voice of Porthos, seeing them
exhaust themselves in a useless struggle, murmured in a jeering tone
those supreme words which came to his lips with the last respiration,
"Too heavy!"
After which the eye darkened and closed, the face became pale, the hand
whitened, and the Titan sank quite down, breathing his last sigh. With
him sank the rock, which, even in his agony, he had still held up. The
three men dropped the levers, which rolled upon the tumulary stone.
Then, breathless, pale, his brow covered with sweat, Aramis listened,
his breast oppressed, his heart ready to break.
Nothing more! The giant slept the eternal sleep, in the sepulcher which
God had made to his measure.