The Man in the Iron Mask

  Chapter L: The Death of a Titan.

  At the moment when Porthos, more accustomed to the darkness than thesemen, coming from open daylight, was looking round him to see if throughthis artificial midnight Aramis were not making him some signal, he felthis arm gently touched, and a voice low as a breath murmured in his ear,"Come."

  "Oh!" said Porthos.

  "Hush!" said Aramis, if possible, yet more softly.

  And amidst the noise of the third brigade, which continued to advance,the imprecations of the guards still left alive, the muffled groans ofthe dying, Aramis and Porthos glided unseen along the granite walls ofthe cavern. Aramis led Porthos into the last but one compartment, andshowed him, in a hollow of the rocky wall, a barrel of powder weighingfrom seventy to eighty pounds, to which he had just attached a fuse. "Myfriend," said he to Porthos, "you will take this barrel, the match ofwhich I am going to set fire to, and throw it amidst our enemies; canyou do so?"

  "_Parbleu!_" replied Porthos; and he lifted the barrel with one hand."Light it!"

  "Stop," said Aramis, "till they are all massed together, and then, myJupiter, hurl your thunderbolt among them."

  "Light it," repeated Porthos.

  "On my part," continued Aramis, "I will join our Bretons, and help themto get the canoe to the sea. I will wait for you on the shore; launch itstrongly, and hasten to us."

  "Light it," said Porthos, a third time.

  "But do you understand me?"

  "_Parbleu!_" said Porthos again, with laughter that he did not evenattempt to restrain, "when a thing is explained to me I understand it;begone, and give me the light."

  Aramis gave the burning match to Porthos, who held out his arm to him,his hands being engaged. Aramis pressed the arm of Porthos with both hishands, and fell back to the outlet of the cavern where the three rowersawaited him.

  Porthos, left alone, applied the spark bravely to the match. Thespark--a feeble spark, first principle of conflagration--shone in thedarkness like a glow-worm, then was deadened against the match which itset fire to, Porthos enlivening the flame with his breath. The smokewas a little dispersed, and by the light of the sparkling match objectsmight, for two seconds, be distinguished. It was a brief but splendidspectacle, that of this giant, pale, bloody, his countenance lighted bythe fire of the match burning in surrounding darkness! The soldiers sawhim, they saw the barrel he held in his hand--they at once understoodwhat was going to happen. Then, these men, already choked with horror atthe sight of what had been accomplished, filled with terror at thoughtof what was about to be accomplished, gave out a simultaneous shriek ofagony. Some endeavored to fly, but they encountered the third brigade,which barred their passage; others mechanically took aim and attemptedto fire their discharged muskets; others fell instinctively upon theirknees. Two or three officers cried out to Porthos to promise him hisliberty if he would spare their lives. The lieutenant of the thirdbrigade commanded his men to fire; but the guards had before them theirterrified companions, who served as a living rampart for Porthos. Wehave said that the light produced by the spark and the match did notlast more than two seconds; but during these two seconds this is whatit illumined: in the first place, the giant, enlarged in the darkness;then, at ten paces off, a heap of bleeding bodies, crushed, mutilated,in the midst of which some still heaved in the last agony, lifting themass as a last respiration inflating the sides of some old monster dyingin the night. Every breath of Porthos, thus vivifying the match, senttowards this heap of bodies a phosphorescent aura, mingled with streaksof purple. In addition to this principal group scattered about thegrotto, as the chances of death or surprise had stretched them, isolatedbodies seemed to be making ghastly exhibitions of their gaping wounds.Above ground, bedded in pools of blood, rose, heavy and sparkling, theshort, thick pillars of the cavern, of which the strongly marked shadesthrew out the luminous particles. And all this was seen by the tremulouslight of a match attached to a barrel of powder, that is to say, a torchwhich, whilst throwing a light on the dead past, showed death to come.

  As I have said, this spectacle did not last above two seconds. Duringthis short space of time an officer of the third brigade got togethereight men armed with muskets, and, through an opening, ordered them tofire upon Porthos. But they who received the order to fire trembled sothat three guards fell by the discharge, and the five remaining ballshissed on to splinter the vault, plow the ground, or indent the pillarsof the cavern.

  A burst of laughter replied to this volley; then the arm of the giantswung round; then was seen whirling through the air, like a fallingstar, the train of fire. The barrel, hurled a distance of thirtyfeet, cleared the barricade of dead bodies, and fell amidst a group ofshrieking soldiers, who threw themselves on their faces. The officer hadfollowed the brilliant train in the air; he endeavored to precipitatehimself upon the barrel and tear out the match before it reached thepowder it contained. Useless! The air had made the flame attached to theconductor more active; the match, which at rest might have burnt fiveminutes, was consumed in thirty seconds, and the infernal work exploded.Furious vortices of sulphur and nitre, devouring shoals of fire whichcaught every object, the terrible thunder of the explosion, this is whatthe second which followed disclosed in that cavern of horrors. The rockssplit like planks of deal beneath the axe. A jet of fire, smoke, and_debris_ sprang from the middle of the grotto, enlarging as it mounted.The large walls of silex tottered and fell upon the sand, and the sanditself, an instrument of pain when launched from its hard bed, riddledthe faces with its myriad cutting atoms. Shrieks, imprecations, humanlife, dead bodies--all were engulfed in one terrific crash.

  The three first compartments became one sepulchral sink into which fellgrimly back, in the order of their weight, every vegetable, mineral,or human fragment. Then the lighter sand and ash came down in turn,stretching like a winding sheet and smoking over the dismal scene. Andnow, in this burning tomb, this subterranean volcano, seek the king'sguards with their blue coats laced with silver. Seek the officers,brilliant in gold, seek for the arms upon which they depended for theirdefense. One single man has made of all of those things a chaos moreconfused, more shapeless, more terrible than the chaos which existedbefore the creation of the world. There remained nothing of the threecompartments--nothing by which God could have recognized His handiwork.As for Porthos, after having hurled the barrel of powder amidst hisenemies, he had fled, as Aramis had directed him to do, and had gainedthe last compartment, into which air, light, and sunshine penetratedthrough the opening. Scarcely had he turned the angle which separatedthe third compartment from the fourth when he perceived at a hundredpaces from him the bark dancing on the waves. There were his friends,there liberty, there life and victory. Six more of his formidablestrides, and he would be out of the vault; out of the vault! a dozen ofhis vigorous leaps and he would reach the canoe. Suddenly he felt hisknees give way; his knees seemed powerless, his legs to yield beneathhim.

  "Oh! oh!" murmured he, "there is my weakness seizing me again! I canwalk no further! What is this?"

  Aramis perceived him through the opening, and unable to conceive whatcould induce him to stop thus--"Come on, Porthos! come on," he cried;"come quickly!"

  "Oh!" replied the giant, making an effort that contorted every muscle ofhis body--"oh! but I cannot." While saying these words, he fell uponhis knees, but with his mighty hands he clung to the rocks, and raisedhimself up again.

  "Quick! quick!" repeated Aramis, bending forward towards the shore, asif to draw Porthos towards him with his arms.

  "Here I am," stammered Porthos, collecting all his strength to make onestep more.

  "In the name of Heaven! Porthos, make haste! the barrel will blow up!"

  "Make haste, monseigneur!" shouted the Bretons to Porthos, who wasfloundering as in a dream.

  But there was no time; the explosion thundered, earth gaped, the smokewhich hurled through the clefts obscured the sky; the sea flowed back asthough driven by the blast of flame which darted from the grotto as iffrom
the jaws of some gigantic fiery chimera; the reflux took thebark out twenty _toises_; the solid rocks cracked to their base, andseparated like blocks beneath the operation of the wedge; a portionof the vault was carried up towards heaven, as if it had been built ofcardboard; the green and blue and topaz conflagration and black lava ofliquefactions clashed and combated an instant beneath a majestic domeof smoke; then oscillated, declined, and fell successively the mightymonoliths of rock which the violence of the explosion had not been ableto uproot from the bed of ages; they bowed to each other like grave andstiff old men, then prostrating themselves, lay down forever in theirdusty tomb.

  This frightful shock seemed to restore Porthos the strength that he hadlost; he arose, a giant among granite giants. But at the moment he wasflying between the double hedge of granite phantoms, these latter, whichwere no longer supported by the corresponding links, began to roll andtotter round our Titan, who looked as if precipitated from heaven amidstrocks which he had just been launching. Porthos felt the very earthbeneath his feet becoming jelly-tremulous. He stretched both hands torepulse the falling rocks. A gigantic block was held back by each of hisextended arms. He bent his head, and a third granite mass sank betweenhis shoulders. For an instant the power of Porthos seemed about to failhim, but this new Hercules united all his force, and the two walls ofthe prison in which he was buried fell back slowly and gave him place.For an instant he appeared, in this frame of granite, like the angelof chaos, but in pushing back the lateral rocks, he lost his point ofsupport, for the monolith which weighed upon his shoulders, and theboulder, pressing upon him with all its weight, brought the giant downupon his knees. The lateral rocks, for an instant pushed back, drewtogether again, and added their weight to the ponderous mass which wouldhave been sufficient to crush ten men. The hero fell without a groan--hefell while answering Aramis with words of encouragement and hope, for,thanks to the powerful arch of his hands, for an instant he believedthat, like Enceladus, he would succeed in shaking off the triple load.But by degrees Aramis beheld the block sink; the hands, strung for aninstant, the arms stiffened for a last effort, gave way, the extendedshoulders sank, wounded and torn, and the rocks continued to graduallycollapse.

  "Porthos! Porthos!" cried Aramis, tearing his hair. "Porthos! where areyou? Speak!"

  "Here, here," murmured Porthos, with a voice growing evidently weaker,"patience! patience!"

  Scarcely had he pronounced these words, when the impulse of the fallaugmented the weight; the enormous rock sank down, pressed by thoseothers which sank in from the sides, and, as it were, swallowed upPorthos in a sepulcher of badly jointed stones. On hearing the dyingvoice of his friend, Aramis had sprung to land. Two of the Bretonsfollowed him, with each a lever in his hand--one being sufficient totake care of the bark. The dying rattle of the valiant gladiator guidedthem amidst the ruins. Aramis, animated, active and young as at twenty,sprang towards the triple mass, and with his hands, delicate as those ofa woman, raised by a miracle of strength the corner-stone of this greatgranite grave. Then he caught a glimpse, through the darkness of thatcharnel-house, of the still brilliant eye of his friend, to whom themomentary lifting of the mass restored a momentary respiration. Thetwo men came rushing up, grasped their iron levers, united their triplestrength, not merely to raise it, but sustain it. All was useless. Theygave way with cries of grief, and the rough voice of Porthos, seeingthem exhaust themselves in a useless struggle, murmured in an almostcheerful tone those supreme words which came to his lips with the lastrespiration, "Too heavy!"

  After which his eyes darkened and closed, his face grew ashy pale, thehands whitened, and the colossus sank quite down, breathing his lastsigh. With him sank the rock, which, even in his dying agony he hadstill held up. The three men dropped the levers, which rolled upon thetumulary stone. Then, breathless, pale, his brow covered with sweat,Aramis listened, his breast oppressed, his heart ready to break.

  Nothing more. The giant slept the eternal sleep, in the sepulcher whichGod had built about him to his measure.