CHAPTER CXXXI.
THE VISION OF ATHOS.
When this fainting of Athos had ceased, the comte, almost ashamed ofhaving given way before this supernatural event, dressed himself andordered his horse, determined to ride to Blois, to open more certaincorrespondence with either Africa, D'Artagnan, or Aramis. In fact, thisletter from Aramis informed the Comte de la Fere of the bad success ofthe expedition of Belle-Isle. It gave him sufficient details of thedeath of Porthos, to move the tender and devoted heart of Athos to itslast 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 toD'Artagnan, to prevail upon him to recommence the painful voyage toBelle-Isle, to accomplish in his company that sad pilgrimage to the tombof the giant he had so much loved, then to return to his dwelling toobey that secret influence which was conducting him to eternity by amysterious road. But scarcely had his joyous servants dressed theirmaster, whom they saw with pleasure preparing himself for a journeywhich might dissipate his melancholy; scarcely had the comte's gentlesthorse been saddled and brought to the door, than the father of Raoulfelt his head become confused, his legs give way, and he clearlyperceived the impossibility of going one step farther. He orderedhimself 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. Nothingcould be more natural than this weakness after the inert repose of thelatter days. Athos took a bouillon, to give him strength, and bathed hisdried lips in a glassful of the wine he loved the best--that old Anjouwine mentioned by Porthos in his admirable will. Then, refreshed, freein mind, he had his horse brought again; but it required the aid of hisservants to mount painfully into the saddle. He did not go a hundredpaces; a shivering seized him again at the turning of the road. "This isvery 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. Amovement, of which Athos was unconscious, had checked the bit.
"Something," said Athos, "wills that I should go no further. Supportme," added he, stretching out his arms; "quick! come closer! I feel allmy muscles relax, and I shall fall from my horse."
The valet had seen the movement made by his master at the moment hereceived the order. He went up to him quickly, received the comte in hisarms, and as they were not yet sufficiently distant from the house forthe servants, who had remained at the door to watch their master'sdeparture, not to perceive the disorder in the usually regularproceeding of the comte, the valet called his comrades by gestures andvoice, and all hastened to his assistance. Athos had gone but a fewsteps on his return, when he felt himself better again. His strengthseemed to revive, and with it the desire to go to Blois. He made hishorse turn round, but, at the animal's first steps, he sunk again into astate of torpor and anguish.
"Well! decidedly," said he, "it is WILLED that I should stay athome." His people flocked around him; they lifted him from his horse andcarried him as quickly as possible into the house. Everything was soonprepared 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 onhorseback, to gain an hour over the courier of Blois," replied hisvalet-de-chambre.
"Thank you," replied Athos, with his bland smile.
The comte fell asleep, but his disturbed slumber resembled sufferingmore than repose. The servant who watched him saw several times theexpression of interior torture thrown out upon his features. PerhapsAthos was dreaming. The day passed away. Blaisois' son returned: thecourier had brought no news. The comte reckoned the minutes withdespair; he shuddered when those minutes had formed an hour. The ideathat he was forgotten seized him once, and brought on a fearful pang ofthe heart. Everybody in the house had given up all hopes of thecourier--his hour had long passed. Four times the express sent to Bloishad reiterated his journey, and there was nothing to the address of thecomte. 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 nightin this painful persuasion. All that a sick man, irritated by suffering,can add of melancholy suppositions to probabilities always sad, Athosheaped up during the early hours of this dismal night. The fever rose;it invaded the chest, where the fire soon caught, according to theexpression of the physician, who had been brought back from Blois byBlaisois at his last journey. It soon gained the head. The physicianmade two successive bleedings, which unlodged it, but left the patientvery weak, and without power of action in anything but his brain. Andyet this redoubtable fever had ceased. It besieged with its lastpalpitations the stiffened extremities; it ended by yielding as midnightstruck.
The physician, seeing the incontestable improvement, returned to Blois,after having ordered some prescriptions, and declared that the comte wassaved. Then commenced for Athos a strange, indefinable state. Free tothink, his mind turned toward Raoul, that beloved son. His imaginationpainted the fields of Africa in the environs of Gigelli, where M. deBeaufort must have landed his army. There were gray rocks, renderedgreen in certain parts by the waters of the sea, when it lashed theshore in storms and tempests. Beyond the shore, strewed over with theserocks like tombs, ascended, in form of an amphitheater, amongmastick-trees and cactus, a sort of small town, full of smoke, confusednoises and terrified movements. All on a sudden, from the bosom of thissmoke arose a flame, which succeeded, by creeping along the houses, incovering 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 _pele-mele_ of _madriers_ falling topieces, of swords broken, of stones calcined, of trees burned anddisappearing. It was a strange thing that in this chaos, in which Athosdistinguished raised arms, in which he heard cries, sobs and groans, hedid not see one human figure. The cannon thundered at a distance,musketry cracked, the sea moaned, flocks made their escape, boundingover the verdant slope. But not a soldier to apply the match to thebatteries of cannon, not a sailor to assist in maneuvering the fleet,not a shepherd for the flocks. After the ruin of the village, and thedestruction of the forts which dominated it, a ruin and a destructionoperated magically without the co-operation of a single human being, theflame was extinguished, the smoke began to descend, then diminished inintensity, paled, and disappeared entirely. Night then came over thescene; a night dark upon the earth, brilliant in the firmament. Thelarge blazing stars which sparkled in the African sky shone withoutlighting anything even around them.
A long silence ensued, which gave, for a moment, repose to the troubledimagination of Athos; and, as he felt that that which he saw was notterminated, he applied more attentively the looks of his understandingupon the strange spectacle which his imagination had presented. Thisspectacle was soon continued for him. A mild and pale moon arose behindthe declivities of the coast, and streaking at first the undulatingripples of the sea, which appeared to have calmed after the roarings ithad sent forth during the vision of Athos--the moon, say we, shed itsdiamonds and opals upon the briars and bushes of the hills. The grayrocks, like so many silent and attentive phantoms, appeared to raisetheir verdant heads to examine likewise the field of battle by the lightof the moon, and Athos perceived that that field, entirely void duringthe combat, was now strewed over with fallen bodies.
An inexpressible shudder of fear and horror seized his soul when herecognized the white and blue uniform of the soldiers of Picardy, withtheir long pikes and blue handles, and their muskets marked with thefleur-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 soulsto which they had opene
d 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 furnitureand their manes--when he saw the white horse of M. de Beaufort, with hishead beaten to pieces, in the first ranks of the dead, Athos passed acold hand over his brow, which he was astonished not to find burning. Hewas convinced by this touch that he was present, as a spectator, withoutfever, at the day after a battle fought upon the shores of Gigelli bythe army of the expedition, which he had seen leave the coasts of Franceand disappear in the horizon, and of which he had saluted with thoughtand gesture the last cannon-shot fired by the duke as a signal offarewell to his country.
Who can paint the mortal agony with which his soul followed, like avigilant eye, the trace of those dead bodies, and examined them, oneafter the other, to see if Raoul slept among them? Who can express theintoxication of joy with which Athos bowed before God, and thanked himfor not having seen him he sought with so much fear among the dead? Infact, fallen dead in their ranks, stiff, icy, all these dead, easy to berecognized, seemed to turn with complacency toward the Comte de la Fere,to be the better seen by him during his funereal inspection. But yet, hewas astonished, while viewing all these bodies, not to perceive thesurvivors. To such a point did the illusion extend, that this vision wasfor him a real voyage made by the father into Africa, to obtain moreexact information respecting his son.
Fatigued, therefore, with having traversed seas and continents, hesought repose under one of the tents sheltered behind a rock, on the topof which floated the white fleur-de-lised pennon. He looked for asoldier to conduct him to the tent of M. de Beaufort. Then, while hiseye was wandering over the plain, turning on all sides, he saw a whiteform appear behind the resinous myrtles. This figure was clothed in thecostume of an officer: it held in its hand a broken sword: it advancedslowly toward Athos, who, stopping short and fixing his eyes upon it,neither spoke nor moved, but wished to open his arms, because, in thissilent and pale officer, he had just recognized Raoul. The comteattempted to utter a cry, but it remained stifled in his throat. Raoul,with a gesture, directed him to be silent, placing his finger on hislips and drawing back by degrees, without Athos being able to see hislegs move. The comte, more pale than Raoul, more trembling, followed hisson, traversing painfully briars and bushes, stones and ditches, Raoulnot appearing to touch the earth, and no obstacle impeding the lightnessof his march. The comte, whom the inequalities of the path fatigued,soon stopped exhausted. Raoul still continued to beckon him to followhim. The tender father, to whom love restored strength, made a lasteffort, and climbed the mountain after the young man, who attracted himby 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 aerial form ofRaoul. Athos stretched out his hand to get closer to his beloved sonupon the plateau, and the latter also stretched out his; but suddenly,as if the young man had been drawn away in spite of himself, stillretreating, he left the earth, and Athos saw the clear blue sky shinebetween the feet of his child and the ground of the hill. Raoul roseinsensibly into the void, still smiling, still calling with agesture:--he departed toward heaven. Athos uttered a cry of terrifiedtenderness. He looked below again. He saw a camp destroyed, and allthose white bodies of the royal army, like so many motionless atoms.And, then, when raising his head, he saw still, still, his son beckoninghim to ascend with him.