THE VISION OF ATHOS.
When this fainting of Athos had ceased, the comte, almost ashamed of
having given way before this supernatural event, dressed himself and
ordered his horse, determined to ride to Blois, to open more certain
correspondence 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
last 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 himself for a journey
which might dissipate his melancholy; scarcely had the comte's gentlest
horse been saddled and brought to the door, than the father of Raoul
felt his head become confused, his legs give way, and he clearly
perceived the impossibility of going one step farther. 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 the 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 it required the aid of his
servants to mount painfully 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 all
my muscles relax, and 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 soon
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' 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 bland smile.
The comte fell asleep, but his disturbed slumber resembled suffering
more than repose. The servant who watched him saw several times the
expression of interior torture thrown out upon his features. Perhaps
Athos was dreaming. The day passed away. Blaisois' son returned: the
courier had brought no news. The comte reckoned the minutes with
despair; he shuddered when those minutes had formed 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 reiterated 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 recommenced the night
in this painful persuasion. All that a sick man, irritated by suffering,
can add of melancholy suppositions to probabilities always sad, 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. It soon gained the head. The physician
made two successive bleedings, which unlodged it, 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 stiffened 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 toward Raoul, that beloved son. His imagination
painted the fields of Africa in the environs of Gigelli, where M. de
Beaufort must have landed his army. There were gray rocks, rendered
green in certain parts by the waters of the sea, when it lashed the
shore in storms and tempests. Beyond the shore, strewed over with these
rocks like tombs, ascended, in form of an amphitheater, among
mastick-trees and cactus, a sort of small town, full of smoke, confused
noises and terrified movements. All on a sudden, from the bosom of this
smoke arose a flame, which succeeded, by creeping along the houses, in
covering the whole surface of this town, and which increased by degrees,
uniting in its red vortices tears, cries, arms extended toward heaven.
There was for a moment, a frightful _pêle-mêle_ of _madriers_ falling to
pieces, of swords broken, of stones calcined, of trees burned 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 cracked, 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 for the flocks. After the ruin of the village, and the
destruction of the forts which dominated it, a ruin and a destruction
operated magically without the co-operation of a single human being, the
flame was extinguished, the smoke began to descend, then diminished in
intensity, paled, and disappeared entirely. Night then came over the
scene; a night dark upon the earth, brilliant in the firmament. The
large blazing stars which sparkled in the African sky shone without
lighting anything even around them.
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 looks of his understanding
upon the strange spectacle which his imagination had presented. This
spectacle was soon continued for him. A mild and pale moon arose behind
the declivities of the coast, and streaking at first the undulating
ripples of the sea, which appeared to have calmed after the roarings it
had sent forth during the vision of Athos--the moon, say we, shed its
diamonds and opals upon the briars and bushes of the hills. The gray
rocks, like so many silent and attentive phantoms, appeared to raise
their verdant heads to examine likewise the field of battle by the light
of the moon, and Athos perceived that that field, entirely void during
the combat, was now strewed over with fallen bodies.
An inexpressible shudder of fear and horror seized his soul when he
recognized the white and blue uniform of the soldiers of Picardy, with
their long pikes and blue handles, and their muskets marked with the
fleur-de-lis on the butts. When he saw all the gaping, cold wounds,
looking up to the azure heavens as if to demand back of them the souls
to which they had opened a passage--when he saw the slaughtered horses,
stiff, with their tongues hanging out at one side of their mouths,
sleeping in the icy blood pooled 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
fever, at the day after a battle fought upon the shores of Gigelli by
the army of the expedition, which he had seen leave the coasts of France
and disappear in the 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, the trace of those dead bodies, 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 dead in their ranks, stiff, icy, all these dead, easy to be
recognized, seemed to turn with complacency toward the Comte de la Fere,
to be the better seen by him during his funereal inspection. 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 resinous myrtles. This figure was clothed in the
costume of an officer: it held in its hand a broken sword: it advanced
slowly toward Athos, who, stopping short and fixing his eyes upon it,
neither spoke nor moved, but wished to open his arms, because, in this
silent and pale officer, he had just recognized Raoul. The comte
attempted to utter a cry, but it remained 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, more pale than Raoul, more trembling, followed his
son, traversing painfully briars and bushes, stones and ditches, Raoul
not appearing to touch the earth, and no obstacle impeding 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 his gesture and his smile.
At length he gained the crest of the hill, and saw, thrown out in black,
upon the horizon whitened by the moon, the elongated aërial form of
Raoul. Athos stretched out 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 spite of himself, 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, still smiling, still calling with a
gesture:--he departed toward heaven. Athos uttered a cry of terrified
tenderness. 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, when raising his head, he saw still, still, his son beckoning
him to ascend with him.