wounded right on that shoulder I ran against head foremost, like a
ram. The only thing that surprizes me is that he didn't strike me dead
on the spot; he had provocation enough, for I must have hurt him
savagely. As to Porthos--oh! as to Porthos--that's a funny affair!"
And the youth began to laugh aloud in spite of himself; looking round
carefully, however, to see if his laughing alone in public without
apparent cause aroused any suspicion....
D'Artagnan, walking and soliloquizing, had come within a few steps of
the Aiguillon House, and in front of it saw Aramis chatting gaily with
three of the King's Guards. Aramis also saw D'Artagnan; but not having
forgotten that it was in his presence M. De Treville had got so angry
in the morning, and as a witness of the rebuke was not at all
pleasant, he pretended not to see him. D'Artagnan, on the other hand,
full of his plans of conciliation and politeness, approached the young
man with a profound bow accompanied by a most gracious smile. Aramis
bowed slightly, but did not smile. Moreover, all four immediately
broke off their conversation.
D'Artagnan was not so dull as not to see he was not wanted; but he was
not yet used enough to social customs to know how to extricate himself
dextrously from his false position, which his generally is who accosts
people he is little acquainted with, and mingles in a conversation
which does not concern him. He was mentally casting about for the
least awkward manner of retreat, when he noticed that Aramis had let
his handkerchief fall and (doubtless by mistake) put his foot on it.
This seemed a favorable chance to repair his mistake of intrusion: he
stooped down, and with the most gracious air he could assume, drew the
handkerchief from under the foot in spite of the efforts made to
detain it, and holding it out to Aramis, said:
"I believe, sir, this is a handkerchief you would be sorry to lose?"
The handkerchief was in truth richly embroidered, and had a cornet and
a coat of arms at one corner. Aramis blushed excessively, and snatched
rather than took the handkerchief.
"Ha! ha!" exclaimed one of the guards, "will you go on saying now,
most discreet Aramis, that you are not on good terms with Madame de
Bois-Tracy, when that gracious lady does you the favor of lending you
her handkerchief!"
Aramis darted at D'Artagnan one of those looks which tell a man that
he has made a mortal enemy; then assuming his mild air he said:
"You are mistaken, gentlemen: this handkerchief is not mine, and I can
not understand why this gentleman has taken it into his head to offer
it to me rather than to one of you. And as a proof of what I say, here
is mine in my pocket."
So saying, he pulled out his handkerchief, which was also not only a
very dainty one, and of fine linen (tho linen was then costly), but
was embroidered and without arms, bearing only a single cipher, the
owner's.
This time D'Artagnan saw his mistake; but Aramis's friends were by no
means convinced, and one of them, addressing the young musketeer with
pretended gravity, said:
"If things were as you make out, I should feel obliged, my dear
Aramis, to reclaim it myself; for as you very well know, Bois-Tracy is
an intimate friend of mine, and I can not allow one of his wife's
belongings to be exhibited as a trophy."
"You make the demand clumsily," replied Aramis; "and while I
acknowledge the justice of your reclamation, I refuse it on account of
the form."
"The fact is," D'Artagnan put in hesitatingly, "I did not actually see
the handkerchief fall from M. Aramis's pocket. He had his foot on it,
that's all, and I thought it was his."
"And you were deceived, my dear sir," replied Aramis coldly, very
little obliged for the explanation; then turning to the guard who had
profest himself Bois-Tracy's friend--"Besides," he went on, "I have
reflected, my dear intimate friend of Bois-Tracy, that I am not less
devotedly his friend than you can possibly be, so that this
handkerchief is quite as likely to have fallen from your pocket as
from mine!"
"On my honor, no!"
"You are about to swear on your honor, and I on my word; and then it
will be pretty evident that one of us will have lied. Now here,
Montaran, we will do better than that: let each take a half."
"Perfectly fair," cried the other two guardsmen; "the judgment of
Solomon! Aramis, you are certainly full of wisdom!"
They burst into a loud laugh, and as may be supposed, the incident
bore no other fruit. In a minute or two the conversation stopt, and
the three guards and the musketeer, after heartily shaking hands,
separated, the guards going one way and Aramis another.
"Now is the time to make my peace with this gentleman," said
D'Artagnan to himself, having stood on one side during all the latter
part of the conversation; and in this good spirit drawing near to
Aramis, who was going off without paying any attention to him, he
said:
"You will excuse me, I hope."
"Ah!" interrupted Aramis, "permit me to observe to you, sir, that you
have not acted in this affair as a man of good breeding ought."
"What!" cried D'Artagnan, "do you suppose--"
"I suppose that you are not a fool, and that you knew very well, even
tho you come from Gascony, that people do not stand on handkerchiefs
for nothing. What the devil! Paris is not paved with linen!"
"Sir, you do wrong in trying to humiliate me," said D'Artagnan, in
whom his native pugnacity began to speak louder than his peaceful
resolutions. "I come from Gascony, it is true; and since you know it,
there is no need to tell you that Gascons are not very patient, so
that when they have asked pardon once, even for a folly, they think
they have done at least as much again as they ought to have done."
"Sir, what I say to you about this matter," said Aramis, "is not for
the sake of hunting a quarrel. Thank Heaven, I am not a
swash-buckler, and being a musketeer only for a while, I only fight
when I am forced to do so, and always with great reluctance; but this
time the affair is serious, for here is a lady compromised by you."
"By us, you mean," cried D'Artagnan.
"Why did you give me back the handkerchief so awkwardly?"
"Why did you let it fall so awkwardly?"
"I have said that the handkerchief did not fall from my pocket."
"Well, by saying that you have told two lies, sir; for I saw it fall."
"Oh ho! you take it up that way, do you, Master Gascon? Well, I will
teach you how to behave yourself."
"And I will send you back to your pulpit, Master Priest. Draw, if you
please, and instantly--"....
"Prudence is a virtue useless enough to musketeers, I know, but
indispensable to churchmen; and as I am only a temporary musketeer, I
hold it best to be prudent. At two o'clock I shall have the honor of
expecting you at Treville's. There I will point out the best place and
time to you."
The two bowed and separated. Aramis went up the street which led to
the Luxembourg; while D'Artagnan, seeing that the appointed hour was
coming near, took the road to the Carmes-Deschaux, saying to himself,
"I certainly can not hope to come out of these scrapes alive; but if I
am doomed to be killed, it will be by a royal musketeer."
GEORGE SAND
Born in France in 1804, died in 1876; her real name Aurore
Dupin, Baroness Dudevant; entered a convent in Paris in
1817, remaining until 1820; married in 1822; sought a life
of independence in 1831 with Jules Sandeau, with whom she
collaborated in writing; became an advanced Republican,
active in politics; wrote for newspapers and started a
newspaper of her own; published "Indiana" in 1831,
"Consuelo" in 1842; "Elle et Lui" in 1858; "Nanon" in 1872;
author of many other books.
LÉLIA AND THE POET[60]
"The prophets are crying in the desert to-day, and no voice answers,
for the world is indifferent and deaf: it lies down and stops its ears
so as to die in peace. A few scattered groups of weak votaries vainly
try to rekindle a spark of virtue. As the last remnants of man's moral
power, they will float for a moment about the abyss, then go and join
the other wrecks at the bottom of that shoreless sea which will
swallow up the world."
"O Lélia, why do you thus despair of those sublime men who aspire to
bring virtue back to our iron age? Even if I were as doubtful of their
success as you are, I would not say so. I should fear to commit an
impious crime."
[Footnote 60: From "Lélia," which was published in 1833, during an
eventful period in its author's life. The character of Lélia was drawn
from George Sand herself as a personification of human nature at war
with itself. The original of Sténio was Alfred de Musset, whose
intimate friendship with the author is historic.]
"I admire those men," said Lélia, "and would like to be the least
among them. But what will those shepherds bearing a star on their
brows be able to do before the huge monster of the Apocalypse--before
that immense and terrible figure outlined in the foreground of all the
prophets' pictures? That woman, as pale and beautiful as vice--that
great harlot of nations, decked with the wealth of the East, and
bestriding a hydra belching forth rivers of poison on all human
pathways--is Civilization; is humanity demoralized by luxury and
science; is the torrent of venom which will swallow up all virtue, all
hope of regeneration."
"O Lélia!" exclaimed the poet, struck by superstition, "are not you
that terrible and unhappy fantom? How many times this fear has taken
possession of my dreams! How many times you have appeared to me as the
type of the unspeakable agony to which the spirit of inquiry has
driven man! With your beauty and your sadness, your weariness and your
skepticism, do you not personify the excess of sorrow produced by the
abuse of thought? Have you not given up, and as it were prostituted,
that moral power, so highly developed by what art, poetry, and science
have done for it, to every new impression and error? Instead of
clinging faithfully and prudently to the simple creed of your fathers,
and to the instinctive indifference God has implanted in man for his
peace and preservation; instead of confining yourself to a pious life
free from vain show, you have abandoned yourself to all the seductions
of ambitious philosophy. You have cast yourself into the torrent of
civilization rising to destroy, and which by dashing along too swiftly
has ruined the scarcely laid foundations of the future. And because
you have delayed the work of centuries for a few days, you think you
have shattered the hourglass of Eternity. There is much pride in this
grief, Lélia! But God will make this billow of stormy centuries, that
for him are but a drop in the ocean, float by. The devouring hydra
will perish for lack of food; and from its world-covering corpse a new
race will issue, stronger and more patient than the old."
"You see far into the future, Sténio! You personify Nature for me, and
are her unspotted child. You have not yet blunted your faculties: you
believe yourself immortal because you feel yourself young and like
that untilled valley now blooming in pride and beauty--never dreaming
that in a single day the plowshare and the hundred-handed monster
called industry can tear its bosom to rob it of its treasures; you are
growing up full of trust and presumption, not foreseeing your coming
life, which will drag you down under the weight of its errors,
disfigure you with the false colors of its promises. Wait, wait a few
years, and you too will say, 'All is passing away!'"
"No, all is not passing away!" said Sténio. "Look at the sun, and the
earth, and the beautiful sky, and these green hills; and even that
ice, winter's fragile edifice, which has withstood the rays of summer
for centuries. Even so man's frail power will prevail! What matters
the fall of a few generations? Do you weep for so slight a thing,
Lélia? Do you deem it possible a single idea can die in the universe?
Will not that imperishable inheritance be found intact in the dust of
our extinct races, just as the inspirations of art and the discoveries
of science arise alive each day from the ashes of Pompeii or the tombs
of Memphis? Oh, what a great and striking proof of intellectual
immortality! Deep mysteries had been lost in the night of time; the
world had forgotten its age, and thinking itself still young, was
alarmed at feeling itself so old. It said as you do, Lélia: 'I am
about to end, for I am growing weak, and I was born but a few days
ago! How few I shall need for dying, since so few were needed for
living!' But one day human corpses were exhumed from the bosom of
Egypt--Egypt that had lived out its period of civilization, and has
just lived its period of barbarism! Egypt, where the ancient light,
lost so long, is being rekindled, and a rested and rejuvenated Egypt
may perhaps soon come and establish herself upon the extinguished
torch of our own. Egypt, the living image of her mummies sleeping
under the dust of ages, and now awaking to the broad daylight of
science in order to reveal the age of the old world to the new! Is
this not solemn and terrible, Lélia? Within the dried-up entrails of a
human corpse the inquisitive glance of our century discovered the
papyrus, that mysterious and sacred monument of man's eternal
power--the still dark but incontrovertible witness of the imposing
duration of creation. Our eager hand unrolls those perfumed bandages,
those frail and indissoluble shrouds at which destruction stopt short.
These bandages that once enfolded a corpse, these manuscripts that
have rested under fleshless ribs in the place once occupied perhaps by
a soul, are human thought; exprest in the science of signs, and
transmitted by the help of an art we had lost, but have found again in
the sepulchers of the East--the art of preserving the remains of the
dead from the outrages of corruption--the greatest power in the
universe. O Lélia, deny the youth of the world if you can, when you
see it stop in artless ignorance before the lessons of the past, and
begin to live on the forgotten ruins of an unknown world."
"Knowledge is not power," replied Lélia. "Learning over again is not
progress; seeing is not living. Who will give us back the power to
act, and above all, the art of enjoying and retaining? We have gone
too far forward now to retreat. What was merely repose for eclipsed
civilizations will be death for our tired-out one; the rejuvenated
nations of the East will come and intoxicate themselves with the
poison we have poured on our soil. The bold barbarian drinkers may
perhaps prolong the orgy of luxury a few hours into the night of time;
but the venom we shall bequeath them will promptly be mortal for them,
as it was for us, and all will drop back into blackness....
"In fact, Sténio, do you not see that the sun is withdrawing from us?
Is not the earth, wearied in its journey, noticeably drifting toward
darkness and chaos? Is your blood so young and ardent as not to feel
the touch of that chill spread like a pall over this planet abandoned
to Fate, the most powerful of the gods? Oh, the cold! that penetrating
pain driving sharp needles into every pore. That curst breath that
withers flowers and burns them like fire; that pain at once physical
and mental, which invades both soul and body, penetrates to the depths
of thought, and paralyzes mind as well as blood! Cold--the sinister
demon who grazes the universe with his damp wing, and breathes
pestilence on bewildered nations! Cold, tarnishing everything,
unrolling its gray and nebulous veil over the sky's rich tints, the
waters' reflections, the hearts of flowers, and the cheeks of maidens!
Cold, that casts its white winding-sheet over fields and woods and
lakes, even over the fur and feathers of animals! Cold, that discolors
all in the material as well as in the intellectual world; not only the
coats of bears and hares on the shores of Archangel, but the very
pleasures of man and the character of his habits in the spots it
approaches! You surely see that everything is being civilized; that is
to say, growing cold. The bronzed nations of the torrid zone are
beginning to open their timid and suspicious hands to the snares of
our skill; lions and tigers are being tamed, and come from the desert
to amuse the peoples of the north. Animals which had never been able
to grow accustomed to our climate, now leave their warm sun without
dying, to live in domesticity among us, and even forget the proud and
bitter sorrow which used to kill them when enslaved. It is because
blood is congealing and growing poorer everywhere, while instinct
grows and develops. The soul rises and leaves the earth, no longer
sufficient for her needs."
END OF VOL. VII.