THE OLD AGE OF ATHOS.
While all 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 anticipated death which is called the absence of those we love.
Returned to his house at Blois, no longer having even Grimaud to receive
a poor smile when he passed through the parterre, Athos daily felt the
decline of the vigor of a nature which for so long a time had appeared
infallible. Age, which had been kept back by the presence of the beloved
object, arrived with that cortege of pains and inconveniences, which
increases in proportion as it makes itself looked for. Athos had no
longer his son to induce him to walk firmly, with his 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 regenerate the fire of his looks.
And then, must it be said, that nature, exquisite in its tenderness and
its reserve, no longer finding anything that comprehended its feelings,
gave itself up to grief with all the warmth of vulgar natures when they
give themselves up to joy. The Comte de la Fere, who had remained a
young man up to his sixty-second year; the warrior, who had preserved
his strength in spite of fatigues, his freshness of mind in spite of
misfortunes, 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 had lost the support of his
latter youth. Still handsome, though bent; noble, but sad; gently, and
tottering under his gray hairs, he sought, since his solitude, the
glades where the rays of the sun penetrated through the foliage of the
walks. He discontinued all the strong 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 had 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.
His people were sometimes terrified to see him, for hours together,
absorbed in a 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 that 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 if to partake
its warmth for a minute with his absent child. And then the dismal,
monotonous walk recommenced, until, quite exhausted, he regained the
chamber and the 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 in a
day. The comte walked feebly as far as the middle trees, seated himself
upon a mossy bank which sloped toward a lateral walk, 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 had a smile on 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, in the
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 the old
French glories. Athos was a great seigneur compared with such nobles as
the king improvised by touching with his yellow fecundating scepter the
dry trunks of the heraldic trees of the province.
People respected, we say, if they did not love Athos. The physician
could not bear to see his people weep, and to see flock round him the
poor of the canton, to whom Athos gave 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 down and
devoured more mortally every day a man but lately so full of life, and
of a desire to live. He remarked upon the cheeks of Athos the purple of
fever, which fires itself and feeds 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, we say; 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 belongs no longer to earth. The
doctor remained for several hours studying this painful struggle of the
will against a superior power; he was terrified at seeing those eyes
always fixed, always directed toward an invisible object; he was
terrified at seeing beat with the same movement that heart from which
never a sigh arose to vary the melancholy state; sometimes the acuteness
of pain creates the hope of the physician. Half a day passed away thus.
The doctor formed his resolution like a brave man, like a man of firm
mind; he issued suddenly from his place of retreat, and went straight up
to Athos, who saw 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.
"Why, 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 that possible? I do not get up."
"Come, come, M. le Comte, no subterfuges; you are a good Christian?"
"I hope so," said Athos.
"Would you kill yourself?"
"Never, doctor."
"Well, monsieur, you are in a fair way of doing so; to remain thus is
suicide; get well! M. 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 concealed grief."
"Concealed!--not at all; I have the absence of my son, doctor; that is
my malady, and I do not conceal it."
"M. le Comte, your son lives, he is strong, he has all the future before
him of men of his merit, and of his race; live for him--"
"But I do live, doctor; oh! be satisfied of that," added he, with a
melancholy smile; "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 in
me. A forgetful, dissipated, indifferent life would be above my strength
now I have no longer Raoul with me. You do not ask the lamp to burn when
the spark has not enlightened the flame; do not ask me to live amid
noise and light. 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 upon
one element, half upon the other; they were neither at the place where
the sea was going to carry them, nor at the place where the earth was
going to lose them; baggages prepared, minds upon the stretch, looks
fixed--they waited. I repeat it, that word is the one which paints my
present life. Lying down, like the soldiers, my ear on the stretch for
the reports 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 a moment, told himself that words were
useless, remedies absurd, and he left the chateau, exhorting Athos'
servants not to leave 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 arrive 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 more profound, more obscure than other people
would have called a dream. This momentary repose which this
forgetfulness afforded the body, fatigued the soul, for Athos lived a
double life during these wanderings of his understanding. One night, he
dreamed 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 of the grief you will feel at home."
And the vision disappeared with the slumber of Athos. At daybreak one of
his servants entered his master's apartments, 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 his weakness.