The Man in the Iron Mask

  Chapter XL: The White Horse and the Black.

  "That is rather surprising," said D'Artagnan; "Gourville running aboutthe streets so gayly, when he is almost certain that M. Fouquet is indanger; when it is almost equally certain that it was Gourville whowarned M. Fouquet just now by the note which was torn into a thousandpieces upon the terrace, and given to the winds by monsieur lesurintendant. Gourville is rubbing his hands; that is because he hasdone something clever. Whence comes M. Gourville? Gourville is comingfrom the Rue aux Herbes. Whither does the Rue aux Herbes lead?" AndD'Artagnan followed, along the tops of the houses of Nantes, dominatedby the castle, the line traced by the streets, as he would have doneupon a topographical plan; only, instead of the dead, flat paper, theliving chart rose in relief with the cries, the movements, and theshadows of men and things. Beyond the inclosure of the city, the greatverdant plains stretched out, bordering the Loire, and appeared to runtowards the pink horizon, which was cut by the azure of the waters andthe dark green of the marshes. Immediately outside the gates of Nantestwo white roads were seen diverging like separate fingers of a gigantichand. D'Artagnan, who had taken in all the panorama at a glance bycrossing the terrace, was led by the line of the Rue aux Herbes tothe mouth of one of those roads which took its rise under the gates ofNantes. One step more, and he was about to descend the stairs, takehis trellised carriage, and go towards the lodgings of M. Fouquet. Butchance decreed, at the moment of plunging into the staircase, that hewas attracted by a moving point then gaining ground upon that road.

  "What is that?" said the musketeer to himself; "a horse galloping,--arunaway horse, no doubt. What a rate he is going at!" The moving pointbecame detached from the road, and entered into the fields. "A whitehorse," continued the captain, who had just observed the color thrownluminously against the dark ground, "and he is mounted; it must be someboy whose horse is thirsty and has run away with him."

  These reflections, rapid as lightning, simultaneous with visualperception, D'Artagnan had already forgotten when he descended thefirst steps of the staircase. Some morsels of paper were spread over thestairs, and shone out white against the dirty stones. "Eh! eh!" said thecaptain to himself, "here are some of the fragments of the note torn byM. Fouquet. Poor man! he has given his secret to the wind; the wind willhave no more to do with it, and brings it back to the king. Decidedly,Fouquet, you play with misfortune! the game is not a fair one,--fortuneis against you. The star of Louis XIV. obscures yours; the adder isstronger and more cunning than the squirrel." D'Artagnan picked up oneof these morsels of paper as he descended. "Gourville's pretty littlehand!" cried he, whilst examining one of the fragments of the note; "Iwas not mistaken." And he read the word "horse." "Stop!" said he; and heexamined another, upon which there was not a letter traced. Upon a thirdhe read the word "white;" "white horse," repeated he, like a child thatis spelling. "Ah, _mordioux!_" cried the suspicious spirit, "a whitehorse!" And, like that grain of powder which, burning, dilates intoten thousand times its volume, D'Artagnan, enlightened by ideas andsuspicions, rapidly reascended the stairs towards the terrace. Thewhite horse was still galloping in the direction of the Loire, at theextremity of which, melting into the vapors of the water, a littlesail appeared, wave-balanced like a water-butterfly. "Oh!" cried themusketeer, "only a man who wants to fly would go at that pace acrossplowed lands; there is but one Fouquet, a financier, to ride thus inopen day upon a white horse; there is no one but the lord of Belle-Islewho would make his escape towards the sea, while there are such thickforests on land, and there is but one D'Artagnan in the world to catchM. Fouquet, who has half an hour's start, and who will have gained hisboat within an hour." This being said, the musketeer gave orders thatthe carriage with the iron trellis should be taken immediately to athicket situated just outside the city. He selected his best horse,jumped upon his back, galloped along the Rue aux Herbes, taking, not theroad Fouquet had taken, but the bank itself of the Loire, certainthat he should gain ten minutes upon the total distance, and, at theintersection of the two lines, come up with the fugitive, who could haveno suspicion of being pursued in that direction. In the rapidity of thepursuit, and with the impatience of the avenger, animating himself as inwar, D'Artagnan, so mild, so kind towards Fouquet, was surprised to findhimself become ferocious--almost sanguinary. For a long time he gallopedwithout catching sight of the white horse. His rage assumed fury, hedoubted himself,--he suspected that Fouquet had buried himself in somesubterranean road, or that he had changed the white horse for one ofthose famous black ones, as swift as the wind, which D'Artagnan, atSaint-Mande, had so frequently admired and envied for their vigor andtheir fleetness.

  At such moments, when the wind cut his eyes so as to make the tearsspring from them, when the saddle had become burning hot, when thegalled and spurred horse reared with pain, and threw behind him a showerof dust and stones, D'Artagnan, raising himself in his stirrups, andseeing nothing on the waters, nothing beneath the trees, looked up intothe air like a madman. He was losing his senses. In the paroxysms ofeagerness he dreamt of aerial ways,--the discovery of the following century;he called to his mind Daedalus and the vast wings that had saved himfrom the prisons of Crete. A hoarse sigh broke from his lips, as herepeated, devoured by the fear of ridicule, "I! I! duped by a Gourville!I! They will say that I am growing old,--they will say I have received amillion to allow Fouquet to escape!" And he again dug his spurs into thesides of his horse: he had ridden astonishingly fast. Suddenly, at theextremity of some open pasture-ground, behind the hedges, he saw a whiteform which showed itself, disappeared, and at last remained distinctlyvisible against the rising ground. D'Artagnan's heart leaped with joy.He wiped the streaming sweat from his brow, relaxed the tension of hisknees,--by which the horse breathed more freely,--and, gathering up hisreins, moderated the speed of the vigorous animal, his active accompliceon this man-hunt. He had then time to study the direction of theroad, and his position with regard to Fouquet. The superintendent hadcompletely winded his horse by crossing the soft ground. He felt thenecessity of gaining a firmer footing, and turned towards the road bythe shortest secant line. D'Artagnan, on his part, had nothing to do butto ride straight on, concealed by the sloping shore; so that he wouldcut his quarry off the road when he came up with him. Then the real racewould begin,--then the struggle would be in earnest.

  D'Artagnan gave his horse good breathing-time. He observed that thesuperintendent had relaxed into a trot, which was to say, he, too, wasfavoring his horse. But both of them were too much pressed for time toallow them to continue long at that pace. The white horse sprang offlike an arrow the moment his feet touched firm ground. D'Artagnandropped his head, and his black horse broke into a gallop. Both followedthe same route; the quadruple echoes of this new race-course wereconfounded. Fouquet had not yet perceived D'Artagnan. But on issuingfrom the slope, a single echo struck the air; it was that of the stepsof D'Artagnan's horse, which rolled along like thunder. Fouquet turnedround, and saw behind him, within a hundred paces, his enemy bent overthe neck of his horse. There could be no doubt--the shining baldrick,the red cassock--it was a musketeer. Fouquet slackened his handlikewise, and the white horse placed twenty feet more between hisadversary and himself.

  "Oh, but," thought D'Artagnan, becoming very anxious, "that is nota common horse M. Fouquet is upon--let us see!" And he attentivelyexamined with his infallible eye the shape and capabilities of thecourser. Round full quarters--a thin long tail--large hocks--thin legs,as dry as bars of steel--hoofs hard as marble. He spurred his own, butthe distance between the two remained the same. D'Artagnan listenedattentively; not a breath of the horse reached him, and yet he seemedto cut the air. The black horse, on the contrary, began to puff like anyblacksmith's bellows.

  "I must overtake him, if I kill my horse," thought the musketeer; and hebegan to saw the mouth of the poor animal, whilst he buried the rowelsof his merciless spurs into his sides. The maddened horse gained twentytoises, and came up within pistol-shot of Fouquet.

  "Co
urage!" said the musketeer to himself, "courage! the white horse willperhaps grow weaker, and if the horse does not fall, the master mustpull up at last." But horse and rider remained upright together, gainingground by difficult degrees. D'Artagnan uttered a wild cry, which madeFouquet turn round, and added speed to the white horse.

  "A famous horse! a mad rider!" growled the captain. "Hola! _mordioux!_Monsieur Fouquet! stop! in the king's name!" Fouquet made no reply.

  "Do you hear me?" shouted D'Artagnan, whose horse had just stumbled.

  "_Pardieu!_" replied Fouquet, laconically; and rode on faster.

  D'Artagnan was nearly mad; the blood rushed boiling to his temples andhis eyes. "In the king's name!" cried he again, "stop, or I will bringyou down with a pistol-shot!"

  "Do!" replied Fouquet, without relaxing his speed.

  D'Artagnan seized a pistol and cocked it, hoping that the double clickof the spring would stop his enemy. "You have pistols likewise," saidhe, "turn and defend yourself."

  Fouquet did turn round at the noise, and looking D'Artagnan full in theface, opened, with his right hand, the part of his dress which concealedhis body, but he did not even touch his holsters. There were not morethan twenty paces between the two.

  "_Mordioux!_" said D'Artagnan, "I will not assassinate you; if you willnot fire upon me, surrender! what is a prison?"

  "I would rather die!" replied Fouquet; "I shall suffer less."

  D'Artagnan, drunk with despair, hurled his pistol to the ground. "Iwill take you alive!" said he; and by a prodigy of skill which thisincomparable horseman alone was capable, he threw his horse forward towithin ten paces of the white horse; already his hand was stretched outto seize his prey.

  "Kill me! kill me!" cried Fouquet, "'twould be more humane!"

  "No! alive--alive!" murmured the captain.

  At this moment his horse made a false step for the second time, andFouquet's again took the lead. It was an unheard-of spectacle, thisrace between two horses which now only kept alive by the will of theirriders. It might be said that D'Artagnan rode, carrying his horse alongbetween his knees. To the furious gallop had succeeded the fast trot,and that had sunk to what might be scarcely called a trot at all.But the chase appeared equally warm in the two fatigued _athletoe_.D'Artagnan, quite in despair, seized his second pistol, and cocked it.

  "At your horse! not at you!" cried he to Fouquet. And he fired. Theanimal was hit in the quarters--he made a furious bound, and plungedforward. At that moment D'Artagnan's horse fell dead.

  "I am dishonored!" thought the musketeer; "I am a miserable wretch! forpity's sake, M. Fouquet, throw me one of your pistols, that I may blowout my brains!" But Fouquet rode away.

  "For mercy's sake! for mercy's sake!" cried D'Artagnan; "that which youwill not do at this moment, I myself will do within an hour, but here,upon this road, I should die bravely; I should die esteemed; do me thatservice, M. Fouquet!"

  M. Fouquet made no reply, but continued to trot on. D'Artagnan began torun after his enemy. Successively he threw away his hat, his coat, whichembarrassed him, and then the sheath of his sword, which got between hislegs as he was running. The sword in his hand itself became too heavy,and he threw it after the sheath. The white horse began to rattle inits throat; D'Artagnan gained upon him. From a trot the exhausted animalsunk to a staggering walk--the foam from his mouth was mixed with blood.D'Artagnan made a desperate effort, sprang towards Fouquet, and seizedhim by the leg, saying in a broken, breathless voice, "I arrest you inthe king's name! blow my brains out, if you like; we have both done ourduty."

  Fouquet hurled far from him, into the river, the two pistols D'Artagnanmight have seized, and dismounting from his horse--"I am your prisoner,monsieur," said he; "will you take my arm, for I see you are ready tofaint?"

  "Thanks!" murmured D'Artagnan, who, in fact, felt the earth sliding fromunder his feet, and the light of day turning to blackness around him;then he rolled upon the sand, without breath or strength. Fouquethastened to the brink of the river, dipped some water in his hat, withwhich he bathed the temples of the musketeer, and introduced a few dropbetween his lips. D'Artagnan raised himself with difficulty, and lookedabout him with a wandering eye. He beheld Fouquet on his knees, with hiswet hat in his hand, smiling upon him with ineffable sweetness. "You arenot off, then?" cried he. "Oh, monsieur! the true king of royalty,in heart, in soul, is not Louis of the Louvre, or Philippe ofSainte-Marguerite; it is you, proscribed, condemned!"

  "I, who this day am ruined by a single error, M. d'Artagnan."

  "What, in the name of Heaven, is that?"

  "I should have had you for a friend! But how shall we return to Nantes?We are a great way from it."

  "That is true," said D'Artagnan, gloomily.

  "The white horse will recover, perhaps; he is a good horse! Mount,Monsieur d'Artagnan; I will walk till you have rested a little."

  "Poor beast! and wounded, too?" said the musketeer.

  "He will go, I tell you; I know him; but we can do better still, let usboth get up, and ride slowly."

  "We can try," said the captain. But they had scarcely charged the animalwith this double load, when he began to stagger, and then with a greateffort walked a few minutes, then staggered again, and sank down dead bythe side of the black horse, which he had just managed to come up to.

  "We will go on foot--destiny wills it so--the walk will be pleasant,"said Fouquet, passing his arm through that of D'Artagnan.

  "_Mordioux!_" cried the latter, with a fixed eye, a contracted brow, anda swelling heart--"What a disgraceful day!"

  They walked slowly the four leagues which separated them from the littlewood behind which the carriage and escort were in waiting. When Fouquetperceived that sinister machine, he said to D'Artagnan, who cast downhis eyes, ashamed of Louis XIV., "There is an idea that did not emanatefrom a brave man, Captain d'Artagnan; it is not yours. What are thesegratings for?" said he.

  "To prevent your throwing letters out."

  "Ingenious!"

  "But you can speak, if you cannot write," said D'Artagnan.

  "Can I speak to you?"

  "Why, certainly, if you wish to do so."

  Fouquet reflected for a moment, then looking the captain full in theface, "One single word," said he; "will you remember it?"

  "I will not forget it."

  "Will you speak it to whom I wish?"

  "I will."

  "Saint-Mande," articulated Fouquet, in a low voice.

  "Well! and for whom?"

  "For Madame de Belliere or Pelisson."

  "It shall be done."

  The carriage rolled through Nantes, and took the route to Angers.