Chapter LVIII. The Angel of Death.

Athos was at this part of his marvelous vision, when the charm was

suddenly broken by a great noise rising from the outer gates. A horse

was heard galloping over the hard gravel of the great alley, and the

sound of noisy and animated conversations ascended to the chamber in

which the comte was dreaming. Athos did not stir from the place he

occupied; he scarcely turned his head towards the door to ascertain the

sooner what these noises could be. A heavy step ascended the stairs; the

horse, which had recently galloped, departed slowly towards the stables.

Great hesitation appeared in the steps, which by degrees approached the

chamber. A door was opened, and Athos, turning a little towards the part

of the room the noise came from, cried, in a weak voice:

“It is a courier from Africa, is it not?”

“No, monsieur le comte,” replied a voice which made the father of Raoul

start upright in his bed.

“Grimaud!” murmured he. And the sweat began to pour down his face.

Grimaud appeared in the doorway. It was no longer the Grimaud we have

seen, still young with courage and devotion, when he jumped the first

into the boat destined to convey Raoul de Bragelonne to the vessels of

the royal fleet. ‘Twas now a stern and pale old man, his clothes covered

with dust, and hair whitened by old age. He trembled whilst leaning

against the door-frame, and was near falling on seeing, by the light of

the lamps, the countenance of his master. These two men who had lived so

long together in a community of intelligence, and whose eyes, accustomed

to economize expressions, knew how to say so many things silently--these

two old friends, one as noble as the other in heart, if they were

unequal in fortune and birth, remained tongue-tied whilst looking at

each other. By the exchange of a single glance they had just read to

the bottom of each other’s hearts. The old servitor bore upon his

countenance the impression of a grief already old, the outward token of

a grim familiarity with woe. He appeared to have no longer in use more

than a single version of his thoughts. As formerly he was accustomed not

to speak much, he was now accustomed not to smile at all. Athos read at

a glance all these shades upon the visage of his faithful servant, and

in the same tone he would have employed to speak to Raoul in his dream:

“Grimaud,” said he, “Raoul is dead. _Is it not so?_”

Behind Grimaud the other servants listened breathlessly, with their

eyes fixed upon the bed of their sick master. They heard the terrible

question, and a heart-breaking silence followed.

“Yes,” replied the old man, heaving the monosyllable from his chest with

a hoarse, broken sigh.

Then arose voices of lamentation, which groaned without measure, and

filled with regrets and prayers the chamber where the agonized father

sought with his eyes the portrait of his son. This was for Athos like

the transition which led to his dream. Without uttering a cry, without

shedding a tear, patient, mild, resigned as a martyr, he raised his eyes

towards Heaven, in order there to see again, rising above the mountain

of Gigelli, the beloved shade that was leaving him at the moment of

Grimaud’s arrival. Without doubt, while looking towards the heavens,

resuming his marvelous dream, he repassed by the same road by which the

vision, at once so terrible and sweet, had led him before; for after

having gently closed his eyes, he reopened them and began to smile: he

had just seen Raoul, who had smiled upon him. With his hands joined upon

his breast, his face turned towards the window, bathed by the fresh air

of night, which brought upon its wings the aroma of the flowers and

the woods, Athos entered, never again to come out of it, into the

contemplation of that paradise which the living never see. God willed,

no doubt, to open to this elect the treasures of eternal beatitude,

at this hour when other men tremble with the idea of being severely

received by the Lord, and cling to this life they know, in the dread of

the other life of which they get but merest glimpses by the dismal murky

torch of death. Athos was spirit-guided by the pure serene soul of his

son, which aspired to be like the paternal soul. Everything for this

just man was melody and perfume in the rough road souls take to return

to the celestial country. After an hour of this ecstasy, Athos softly

raised his hands as white as wax; the smile did not quit his lips, and

he murmured low, so low as scarcely to be audible, these three words

addressed to God or to Raoul:

“HERE I AM!”

And his hands fell slowly, as though he himself had laid them on the

bed.

Death had been kind and mild to this noble creature. It had spared him

the tortures of the agony, convulsions of the last departure; had opened

with an indulgent finger the gates of eternity to that noble soul. God

had no doubt ordered it thus that the pious remembrance of this death

should remain in the hearts of those present, and in the memory of other

men--a death which caused to be loved the passage from this life to the

other by those whose existence upon this earth leads them not to dread

the last judgment. Athos preserved, even in the eternal sleep, that

placid and sincere smile--an ornament which was to accompany him to the

tomb. The quietude and calm of his fine features made his servants for

a long time doubt whether he had really quitted life. The comte’s people

wished to remove Grimaud, who, from a distance, devoured the face now

quickly growing marble-pale, and did not approach, from pious fear of

bringing to him the breath of death. But Grimaud, fatigued as he was,

refused to leave the room. He sat himself down upon the threshold,

watching his master with the vigilance of a sentinel, jealous to receive

either his first waking look or his last dying sigh. The noises all were

quiet in the house--every one respected the slumber of their lord. But

Grimaud, by anxiously listening, perceived that the comte no longer

breathed. He raised himself with his hands leaning on the ground, looked

to see if there did not appear some motion in the body of his master.

Nothing! Fear seized him; he rose completely up, and, at the very

moment, heard some one coming up the stairs. A noise of spurs knocking

against a sword--a warlike sound familiar to his ears--stopped him as he

was going towards the bed of Athos. A voice more sonorous than brass or

steel resounded within three paces of him.

“Athos! Athos! my friend!” cried this voice, agitated even to tears.

“Monsieur le Chevalier d’Artagnan,” faltered out Grimaud.

“Where is he? Where is he?” continued the musketeer. Grimaud seized

his arm in his bony fingers, and pointed to the bed, upon the sheets of

which the livid tints of death already showed.

A choked respiration, the opposite to a sharp cry, swelled the throat of

D’Artagnan. He advanced on tip-toe, trembling, frightened at the noise

his feet made on the floor, his heart rent by a nameless agony. He

placed his ear to the breast of Athos, his face to the comte’s mouth.

Neither noise, nor breath! D’Artagnan drew back. Grimaud, who had

followed him with his eyes, and for whom each of his movements had been

a revelation, came timidly; seated himself at the foot of the bed, and

glued his lips to the sheet which was raised by the stiffened feet of

his master. Then large drops began to flow from his red eyes. This old

man in invincible despair, who wept, bent doubled without uttering a

word, presented the most touching spectacle that D’Artagnan, in a life

so filled with emotion, had ever met with.

The captain resumed standing in contemplation before that smiling dead

man, who seemed to have burnished his last thought, to give his best

friend, the man he had loved next to Raoul, a gracious welcome even

beyond life. And for reply to that exalted flattery of hospitality,

D’Artagnan went and kissed Athos fervently on the brow, and with his

trembling fingers closed his eyes. Then he seated himself by the pillow

without dread of that dead man, who had been so kind and affectionate

to him for five and thirty years. He was feeding his soul with the

remembrances the noble visage of the comte brought to his mind in

crowds--some blooming and charming as that smile--some dark, dismal, and

icy as that visage with its eyes now closed to all eternity.

All at once the bitter flood which mounted from minute to minute invaded

his heart, and swelled his breast almost to bursting. Incapable of

mastering his emotion, he arose, and tearing himself violently from the

chamber where he had just found dead him to whom he came to report the

news of the death of Porthos, he uttered sobs so heart-rending that the

servants, who seemed only to wait for an explosion of grief, answered to

it by their lugubrious clamors, and the dogs of the late comte by their

lamentable howlings. Grimaud was the only one who did not lift up his

voice. Even in the paroxysm of his grief he would not have dared to

profane the dead, or for the first time disturb the slumber of his

master. Had not Athos always bidden him be dumb?

At daybreak D’Artagnan, who had wandered about the lower hall, biting

his fingers to stifle his sighs--D’Artagnan went up once more; and

watching the moments when Grimaud turned his head towards him, he made

him a sign to come to him, which the faithful servant obeyed without

making more noise than a shadow. D’Artagnan went down again, followed

by Grimaud; and when he had gained the vestibule, taking the old man’s

hands, “Grimaud,” said he, “I have seen how the father died; now let me

know about the son.”

Grimaud drew from his breast a large letter, upon the envelope of which

was traced the address of Athos. He recognized the writing of M. de

Beaufort, broke the seal, and began to read, while walking about in the

first steel-chill rays of dawn, in the dark alley of old limes, marked

by the still visible footsteps of the comte who had just died.