Chapter LVI. The Old Age of Athos.

While these affairs were separating forever the four musketeers,

formerly bound together in a manner that seemed indissoluble, Athos,

left alone after the departure of Raoul, began to pay his tribute to

that foretaste of death which is called the absence of those we love.

Back in his house at Blois, no longer having even Grimaud to receive

a poor smile as he passed through the parterre, Athos daily felt

the decline of vigor of a nature which for so long a time had seemed

impregnable. Age, which had been kept back by the presence of the

beloved object, arrived with that _cortege_ of pains and inconveniences,

which grows by geometrical accretion. Athos had no longer his son to

induce him to walk firmly, with head erect, as a good example; he had no

longer, in those brilliant eyes of the young man, an ever-ardent focus

at which to kindle anew the fire of his looks. And then, must it be

said, that nature, exquisite in tenderness and reserve, no longer

finding anything to understand its feelings, gave itself up to grief

with all the warmth of common natures when they yield to joy. The Comte

de la Fere, who had remained a young man to his sixty-second year;

the warrior who had preserved his strength in spite of fatigue; his

freshness of mind in spite of misfortune, his mild serenity of soul and

body in spite of Milady, in spite of Mazarin, in spite of La Vallière;

Athos had become an old man in a week, from the moment at which he lost

the comfort of his later youth. Still handsome, though bent, noble, but

sad, he sought, since his solitude, the deeper glades where sunshine

scarcely penetrated. He discontinued all the mighty exercises he had

enjoyed through life, when Raoul was no longer with him. The servants,

accustomed to see him stirring with the dawn at all seasons, were

astonished to hear seven o’clock strike before their master quitted his

bed. Athos remained in bed with a book under his pillow--but he did not

sleep, neither did he read. Remaining in bed that he might no longer

have to carry his body, he allowed his soul and spirit to wander from

their envelope and return to his son, or to God. [6]

His people were sometimes terrified to see him, for hours together,

absorbed in silent reverie, mute and insensible; he no longer heard the

timid step of the servant who came to the door of his chamber to watch

the sleeping or waking of his master. It often occurred that he forgot

the day had half passed away, that the hours for the two first meals

were gone by. Then he was awakened. He rose, descended to his shady

walk, then came out a little into the sun, as though to partake of its

warmth for a minute in memory of his absent child. And then the dismal

monotonous walk recommenced, until, exhausted, he regained the chamber

and his bed, his domicile by choice. For several days the comte did not

speak a single word. He refused to receive the visits that were paid

him, and during the night he was seen to relight his lamp and pass long

hours in writing, or examining parchments.

Athos wrote one of these letters to Vannes, another to Fontainebleau;

they remained without answers. We know why: Aramis had quitted France,

and D’Artagnan was traveling from Nantes to Paris, from Paris to

Pierrefonds. His _valet de chambre_ observed that he shortened his walk

every day by several turns. The great alley of limes soon became too

long for feet that used to traverse it formerly a hundred times a day.

The comte walked feebly as far as the middle trees, seated himself upon

a mossy bank that sloped towards a sidewalk, and there waited the return

of his strength, or rather the return of night. Very shortly a hundred

steps exhausted him. At length Athos refused to rise at all; he declined

all nourishment, and his terrified people, although he did not complain,

although he wore a smile upon his lips, although he continued to speak

with his sweet voice--his people went to Blois in search of the ancient

physician of the late Monsieur, and brought him to the Comte de la Fere

in such a fashion that he could see the comte without being himself

seen. For this purpose, they placed him in a closet adjoining the

chamber of the patient, and implored him not to show himself, for fear

of displeasing their master, who had not asked for a physician. The

doctor obeyed. Athos was a sort of model for the gentlemen of the

country; the Blaisois boasted of possessing this sacred relic of French

glory. Athos was a great seigneur compared with such nobles as the king

improvised by touching with his artificial scepter the patched-up trunks

of the heraldic trees of the province.

People respected Athos, we say, and they loved him. The physician could

not bear to see his people weep, to see flock round him the poor of the

canton, to whom Athos had so often given life and consolation by his

kind words and his charities. He examined, therefore, from the depths

of his hiding-place, the nature of that mysterious malady which bent

and aged more mortally every day a man but lately so full of life and a

desire to live. He remarked upon the cheeks of Athos the hectic hue of

fever, which feeds upon itself; slow fever, pitiless, born in a fold

of the heart, sheltering itself behind that rampart, growing from

the suffering it engenders, at once cause and effect of a perilous

situation. The comte spoke to nobody; he did not even talk to

himself. His thought feared noise; it approached to that degree of

over-excitement which borders upon ecstasy. Man thus absorbed, though he

does not yet belong to God, already appertains no longer to the earth.

The doctor remained for several hours studying this painful struggle of

the will against superior power; he was terrified at seeing those eyes

always fixed, ever directed on some invisible object; was terrified at

the monotonous beating of that heart from which never a sigh arose

to vary the melancholy state; for often pain becomes the hope of the

physician. Half a day passed away thus. The doctor formed his resolution

like a brave man; he issued suddenly from his place of retreat, and went

straight up to Athos, who beheld him without evincing more surprise than

if he had understood nothing of the apparition.

“Monsieur le comte, I crave your pardon,” said the doctor, coming up

to the patient with open arms; “but I have a reproach to make you--you

shall hear me.” And he seated himself by the pillow of Athos, who had

great trouble in rousing himself from his preoccupation.

“What is the matter, doctor?” asked the comte, after a silence.

“The matter is, you are ill, monsieur, and have had no advice.”

“I! ill!” said Athos, smiling.

“Fever, consumption, weakness, decay, monsieur le comte!”

“Weakness!” replied Athos; “is it possible? I do not get up.”

“Come, come! monsieur le comte, no subterfuges; you are a good

Christian?”

“I hope so,” said Athos.

“Is it your wish to kill yourself?”

“Never, doctor.”

“Well! monsieur, you are in a fair way of doing so. Thus to remain is

suicide. Get well! monsieur le comte, get well!”

“Of what? Find the disease first. For my part, I never knew myself

better; never did the sky appear more blue to me; never did I take more

care of my flowers.”

“You have a hidden grief.”

“Concealed!--not at all; the absence of my son, doctor; that is my

malady, and I do not conceal it.”

“Monsieur le comte, your son lives, he is strong, he has all the future

before him--the future of men of merit, of his race; live for him--”

“But I do live, doctor; oh! be satisfied of that,” added he, with a

melancholy smile; “for as long as Raoul lives, it will be plainly known,

for as long as he lives, I shall live.”

“What do you say?”

“A very simple thing. At this moment, doctor, I leave life suspended

within me. A forgetful, dissipated, indifferent life would be beyond my

strength, now I have no longer Raoul with me. You do not ask the lamp

to burn when the match has not illumed the flame; do not ask me to live

amidst noise and merriment. I vegetate, I prepare myself, I wait. Look,

doctor; remember those soldiers we have so often seen together at the

ports, where they were waiting to embark; lying down, indifferent, half

on one element, half on the other; they were neither at the place where

the sea was going to carry them, nor at the place the earth was going

to lose them; baggage prepared, minds on the stretch, arms stacked--they

waited. I repeat it, the word is the one which paints my present life.

Lying down like the soldiers, my ear on the stretch for the report that

may reach me, I wish to be ready to set out at the first summons. Who

will make me that summons? life or death? God or Raoul? My baggage

is packed, my soul is prepared, I await the signal--I wait, doctor, I

wait!”

The doctor knew the temper of that mind; he appreciated the strength

of that body; he reflected for the moment, told himself that words

were useless, remedies absurd, and left the chateau, exhorting Athos’s

servants not to quit him for a moment.

The doctor being gone, Athos evinced neither anger nor vexation at

having been disturbed. He did not even desire that all letters that

came should be brought to him directly. He knew very well that every

distraction which should arise would be a joy, a hope, which his

servants would have paid with their blood to procure him. Sleep had

become rare. By intense thinking, Athos forgot himself, for a few hours

at most, in a reverie most profound, more obscure than other people

would have called a dream. The momentary repose which this forgetfulness

thus gave the body, still further fatigued the soul, for Athos lived a

double life during these wanderings of his understanding. One night,

he dreamt that Raoul was dressing himself in a tent, to go upon an

expedition commanded by M. de Beaufort in person. The young man was sad;

he clasped his cuirass slowly, and slowly he girded on his sword.

“What is the matter?” asked his father, tenderly.

“What afflicts me is the death of Porthos, ever so dear a friend,”

replied Raoul. “I suffer here the grief you soon will feel at home.”

And the vision disappeared with the slumber of Athos. At daybreak one of

his servants entered his master’s apartment, and gave him a letter which

came from Spain.

“The writing of Aramis,” thought the comte; and he read.

“Porthos is dead!” cried he, after the first lines. “Oh! Raoul, Raoul!

thanks! thou keepest thy promise, thou warnest me!”

And Athos, seized with a mortal sweat, fainted in his bed, without any

other cause than weakness.