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 outward gates of the
house. A horse was heard galloping over the hard gravel of the great
alley, and the sound of most 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 toward 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
toward the stables. Great hesitation appeared in the steps which by
degrees approached the chamber of Athos. A door then was opened, and
Athos, turning a little toward 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 cheeks.
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. He was a stern and pale old man, his clothes covered
with dust, with a few scattered hairs whitened by old age. He trembled
while 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 interdicted
while looking at each other. By the exchange of a single glance they had
just read to the bottom of each other's heart. Grimaud bore upon his
countenance the impression of a grief already old, of a dismal
familiarity with it. He appeared to have no longer in use but one 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--
"Grimaud," said he, "Raoul is dead, is he not?"
Behind Grimaud, the other servants listened breathlessly, with their
eyes fixed upon the bed of their sick master. They heard the terrible
question, and an awful silence ensued.
"Yes," replied the old man, heaving up the monosyllable from his chest
with a hoarse, broken sigh.
Then arose voices of lamentation, which groaned without measure, and
filled with regrets and prayers the chamber where the agonized father
sought with his eyes for the portrait of his son. This was for Athos
like the transition which led to his dream. Without uttering a cry,
without shedding a tear, patient, mild, resigned as a martyr, he raised
his eyes toward heaven, in order to there see again, rising above the
mountain of Gigelli, the beloved shade which was leaving him at the
moment of Grimaud's arrival. Without doubt, while looking toward the
heavens, when resuming his marvelous dream, he repassed by the same road
by which the vision, at once so terrible and so sweet, had led him
before, for, after having gently closed his eyes, he reopened them and
began to smile. He had just seen Raoul, who had smiled upon him. With
his hands joined upon his breast, his face turned toward the window,
bathed by the fresh air of night, which brought to his pillow the aroma
of the flowers and the woods, Athos entered, never again to come out of
it, into the contemplation of that paradise which the living never see.
God willed, no doubt, to open to this elect the treasures of eternal
beatitude, at the hour when other men tremble with the idea of being
severely received by the Lord, and cling to this life they know, in the
dread of the other life of which they get a glimpse by the dismal, murky
torches of death. Athos was guided by the pure and serene soul of his
son, which aspired to be like the paternal soul. Everything for this
just man was melody and perfume in the rough road which souls take to
return to the celestial country. After an hour of this ecstasy, Athos
softly raised his hands, as white as wax; the smile did not quit his
lips, and he murmured low, so low as scarcely to be audible, these three
words addressed to God or to Raoul:
"HERE I AM!"
And his hands fell down slowly, as if he himself had laid them on the
bed.
Death had been kind and mild to this noble creature. It had spared him
the tortures of the agony, the convulsions of the last departure; it had
opened with an indulgent finger the gates of eternity to that noble soul
worthy of every respect. God had no doubt ordered it thus that the pious
remembrance of this death should remain in the hearts of those present,
and in the memory of other men--a death which caused to be loved the
passage from this life to the other by those whose existence upon this
earth leads them not to dread the last judgment. Athos, preserved, even
in the eternal sleep, that placid and sincere smile--an ornament which
was to accompany him to the tomb. The quietude of his features, the calm
of his nothingness, made his servants for a long time doubt whether he
had really quitted life. The comte's people wished to remove Grimaud,
who from a distance devoured the face growing so pale, and did not
approach, from the pious fear of bringing to him the breath of death.
But Grimaud, fatigued as he was, refused to leave the room. He sat
himself down upon the threshold, watching his master with the vigilance
of a sentinel, and jealous to receive either his first waking look or
his last dying sigh. The noises were all quieted in the house, and every
one respected the slumber of their lord. But Grimaud, by anxiously
listening, perceived that the comte no longer breathed. He raised
himself, with his hands leaning on the ground, looked to see if there
did not appear some motion in the body of his master. Nothing! Fear
seized him; he rose completely up, and, at the very moment, heard some
one coming up the stairs. A noise of spurs knocking against a sword--a
warlike sound, familiar to his ears--stopped him as he was going toward
the bed of Athos. A voice still more sonorous than brass or steel
resounded within three paces of him.
"Athos! Athos! my friend!" cried this voice, agitated even to tears.
"Monsieur le Chevalier d'Artagnan!" faltered out Grimaud.
"Where is he? Where is he?" continued the musketeer.
Grimaud seized his arm in his bony fingers, and pointed to the bed, upon
the sheets of which the livid tints of the dead already showed.
A choked respiration, the opposite to a sharp cry, swelled the throat of
D'Artagnan. He advanced on tiptoe, trembling, frightened at the noise
his feet made upon the floor, and his heart rent by a nameless agony. He
placed his ear to the breast of Athos, his face to the comte's mouth.
Neither noise nor breath! D'Artagnan drew back. Grimaud, who had
followed him with his eyes, and for whom each of his movements had been
a revelation, came timidly, and seated himself at the foot of the bed,
and glued his lips to the sheet which was raised by the stiffened feet
of his master. Then large drops began to flow from his red eyes. This
old man in despair, who wept, bent double without uttering a word,
presented the most moving spectacle that D'Artagnan, in a life so filled
with emotion, had ever met with.
The captain remained standing in contemplation before that smiling dead
man, who seemed to have kept his last thought, to make to his best
friend, to the man he had loved next to Raoul, a gracious welcome even
beyond life; and as if to reply to that exalted flattery of hospitality,
D'Artagnan went and kissed Athos fervently on the brow, and with his
trembling fingers closed his eyes. Then he seated himself by the pillow
without dread of that dead man, who had been so kind and affectionate to
him for thirty-five years; he fed himself greedily with the remembrances
which the noble visage of the comte brought to his mind in crowds--some
blooming and charming as that smile--some dark, dismal, and icy, as that
face with its eyes closed for eternity.
All at once, the bitter flood which mounted from minute to minute
invaded his heart, and swelled his breast almost to bursting. Incapable
of mastering his emotion, he arose, and tearing himself violently from
the chamber where he had just found dead him to whom he came to report
the news of the death of Porthos, he uttered sobs so heart-rending, that
the servants, who seemed only to wait for an explosion of grief,
answered to it by their lugubrious clamors, and the dogs of the late
comte by their lamentable howlings. Grimaud was the only one who did not
lift up his voice. Even in the paroxysm of his grief he would not have
dared to profane the dead, or for the first time disturb the slumber of
his master. Athos had accustomed him never to speak.
At daybreak, D'Artagnan, who had wandered about the lower hall biting
his fingers to stifle his sighs--D'Artagnan went up once more; and
watching the moment when Grimaud turned his head toward him, he made him
a sign to come to him, which the faithful servant obeyed without making
more noise than a shadow. D'Artagnan went down again followed by
Grimaud; and when he had gained the vestibule, taking the old man's
hands, "Grimaud," said he, "I have seen how the father died; now let me
know how the son died."
Grimaud drew from his breast a large letter, upon the envelope of which
was traced the address of Athos. He recognized the writing of M. de
Beaufort, broke the seal, and began to read, walking about in the first
blue rays of day, in the dark alley of old limes, marked by the still
visible footsteps of the comte who had just died.