The Man in the Iron Mask, Alexandre Dumas [the best motivational books TXT] 📗
- Author: Alexandre Dumas
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“No; for my part I prefer having something to reproach the king with; it is a pride natural to my race to pretend to a superiority over royal races. Doing what you propose, I should become the obliged of the king; I should certainly be the gainer on that ground, but I should be a loser in my conscience.—No, thank you!”
“Then give me two things, Athos,—your absolution.”
“Oh! I give it you if you really wished to avenge the weak and oppressed against the oppressor.”
“That is sufficient for me,” said Aramis, with a blush which was lost in the obscurity of the night. “And now, give me your two best horses to gain the second post, as I have been refused any under the pretext of the Duc de Beaufort being traveling in this country.”
“You shall have the two best horses, Aramis; and again I recommend poor Porthos strongly to your care.”
“Oh! I have no fear on that score. One word more: do you think I am maneuvering for him as I ought?”
“The evil being committed, yes; for the king would not pardon him, and you have, whatever may be said, always a supporter in M. Fouquet, who will not abandon you, he being himself compromised, notwithstanding his heroic action.”
“You are right. And that is why, instead of gaining the sea at once, which would proclaim my fear and guilt, that is why I remain upon French ground. But Belle-Isle will be for me whatever ground I wish it to be, English, Spanish, or Roman; all will depend, with me, on the standard I shall think proper to unfurl.”
“How so?”
“It was I who fortified Belle-Isle; and, so long as I defend it, nobody can take Belle-Isle from me. And then, as you have said just now, M. Fouquet is there. Belle-Isle will not be attacked without the signature of M. Fouquet.”
“That is true. Nevertheless, be prudent. The king is both cunning and strong.” Aramis smiled.
“I again recommend Porthos to you,” repeated the count, with a sort of cold persistence.
“Whatever becomes of me, count,” replied Aramis, in the same tone, “our brother Porthos will fare as I do—or better.”
Athos bowed whilst pressing the hand of Aramis, and turned to embrace Porthos with emotion.
“I was born lucky, was I not?” murmured the latter, transported with happiness, as he folded his cloak round him.
“Come, my dear friend,” said Aramis.
Raoul had gone out to give orders for the saddling of the horses. The group was already divided. Athos saw his two friends on the point of departure, and something like a mist passed before his eyes and weighed upon his heart.
“It is strange,” thought he, “whence comes the inclination I feel to embrace Porthos once more?” At that moment Porthos turned round, and he came towards his old friend with open arms. This last endearment was tender as in youth, as in times when hearts were warm—life happy. And then Porthos mounted his horse. Aramis came back once more to throw his arms round the neck of Athos. The latter watched them along the high-road, elongated by the shade, in their white cloaks. Like phantoms they seemed to enlarge on their departure from the earth, and it was not in the mist, but in the declivity of the ground that they disappeared. At the end of the perspective, both seemed to have given a spring with their feet, which made them vanish as if evaporated into cloud-land.
Then Athos, with a very heavy heart, returned towards the house, saying to Bragelonne, “Raoul, I don’t know what it is that has just told me that I have seen those two for the last time.”
“It does not astonish me, monsieur, that you should have such a thought,” replied the young man, “for I have at this moment the same, and think also that I shall never see Messieurs du Vallon and d’Herblay again.”
“Oh! you,” replied the count, “you speak like a man rendered sad by a different cause; you see everything in black; you are young, and if you chance never to see those old friends again, it will because they no longer exist in the world in which you have yet many years to pass. But I—”
Raoul shook his head sadly, and leaned upon the shoulder of the count, without either of them finding another word in their hearts, which were ready to overflow.
All at once a noise of horses and voices, from the extremity of the road to Blois, attracted their attention that way. Flambeaux-bearers shook their torches merrily among the trees of their route, and turned round, from time to time, to avoid distancing the horsemen who followed them. These flames, this noise, this dust of a dozen richly caparisoned horses, formed a strange contrast in the middle of the night with the melancholy and almost funereal disappearance of the two shadows of Aramis and Porthos. Athos went towards the house; but he had hardly reached the parterre, when the entrance gate appeared in a blaze; all the flambeaux stopped and appeared to enflame the road. A cry was heard of “M. le Duc de Beaufort”—and Athos sprang towards the door of his house. But the duke had already alighted from his horse, and was looking around him.
“I am here, monseigneur,” said Athos.
“Ah! good evening, dear count,” said the prince, with that frank cordiality which won him so many hearts. “Is it too late for a friend?”
“Ah! my dear prince, come in!” said the count.
And, M. de Beaufort leaning on the arm of Athos, they entered the house, followed by Raoul, who walked respectfully and modestly among the officers of the prince, with several of whom he was acquainted.
Chapter XXVII. Monsieur de Beaufort.
The prince turned round at the moment when Raoul, in order to leave him alone with Athos, was shutting the door, and preparing to go with the other officers into an adjoining apartment.
“Is that the young man I have heard M. le Prince speak so highly of?” asked M. de Beaufort.
“It is, monseigneur.”
“He is quite the soldier; let him stay, count, we cannot spare him.”
“Remain, Raoul, since monseigneur permits it,” said Athos.
“Ma foi! he is tall and handsome!” continued the duke. “Will you give him to me, monseigneur, if I ask him of you?”
“How am I to understand you, monseigneur?” said Athos.
“Why, I call upon you to bid you farewell.”
“Farewell!”
“Yes, in good truth. Have you no idea of what I am about to become?”
“Why, I suppose, what you have always been, monseigneur,—a valiant prince, and an excellent gentleman.”
“I am going to become an African prince,—a Bedouin gentleman. The king is sending me to make conquests among the Arabs.”
“What is this you tell me, monseigneur?”
“Strange, is it not? I, the Parisian par essence, I who have reigned in the faubourgs, and have been called King of the Halles,—I am going to pass from the Place Maubert to the minarets of Gigelli; from a Frondeur I am becoming an adventurer!”
“Oh, monseigneur, if you did not yourself tell me that—”
“It would not be credible, would it? Believe me, nevertheless, and we have but to bid each other farewell. This is what comes of getting into favor again.”
“Into favor?”
“Yes. You smile. Ah, my dear count, do you know why I have accepted this enterprise, can you guess?”
“Because your highness loves glory above—everything.”
“Oh! no; there is no glory in firing muskets at savages. I see no glory in that, for my part, and it is more probable that I shall there meet with something else. But I have wished, and still wish earnestly, my dear count, that my life should have that last facet, after all the whimsical exhibitions I have seen myself make during fifty years. For, in short, you must admit that it is sufficiently strange to be born the grandson of a king, to have made war against kings, to have been reckoned among the powers of the age, to have maintained my rank, to feel Henry IV. within me, to be great admiral of France—and then to go and get killed at Gigelli, among all those Turks, Saracens, and Moors.”
“Monseigneur, you harp with strange persistence on that theme,” said Athos, in an agitated voice. “How can you suppose that so brilliant a destiny will be extinguished in that remote and miserable scene?”
“And can you believe, upright and simple as you are, that if I go into Africa for this ridiculous motive, I will not endeavor to come out of it without ridicule? Shall I not give the world cause to speak of me? And to be spoken of, nowadays, when there are Monsieur le Prince, M. de Turenne, and many others, my contemporaries, I, admiral of France, grandson of Henry IV., king of Paris, have I anything left but to get myself killed? Cordieu! I will be talked of, I tell you; I shall be killed whether or not; if not there, somewhere else.”
“Why, monseigneur, this is mere exaggeration; and hitherto you have shown nothing exaggerated save in bravery.”
“Peste! my dear friend, there is bravery in facing scurvy, dysentery, locusts, poisoned arrows, as my ancestor St. Louis did. Do you know those fellows still use poisoned arrows? And then, you know me of old, I fancy, and you know that when I once make up my mind to a thing, I perform it in grim earnest.”
“Yes, you made up your mind to escape from Vincennes.”
“Ay, but you aided me in that, my master; and, a propos, I turn this way and that, without seeing my old friend, M. Vaugrimaud. How is he?”
“M. Vaugrimaud is still your highness’s most respectful servant,” said Athos, smiling.
“I have a hundred pistoles here for him, which I bring as a legacy. My will is made, count.”
“Ah! monseigneur! monseigneur!”
“And you may understand that if Grimaud’s name were to appear in my will—” The duke began to laugh; then addressing Raoul, who, from the commencement of this conversation, had sunk into a profound reverie, “Young man,” said he, “I know there is to be found here a certain De Vouvray wine, and I believe—” Raoul left the room precipitately to order the wine. In the meantime M. de Beaufort took the hand of Athos.
“What do you mean to do with him?” asked he.
“Nothing at present, monseigneur.”
“Ah! yes, I know; since the passion of the king for La Valliere.”
“Yes, monseigneur.”
“That is all true, then, is it? I think I know her, that little La Valliere. She is not particularly handsome, if I remember right?”
“No, monseigneur,” said Athos.
“Do you know whom she reminds me of?”
“Does she remind your highness of any one?”
“She reminds me of a very agreeable girl, whose mother lived in the Halles.”
“Ah! ah!” said Athos, smiling.
“Oh! the good old times,” added M. de Beaufort. “Yes, La Valliere reminds me of that girl.”
“Who had a son, had she not?” 3
“I believe she had,” replied the duke, with careless naivete and a complaisant forgetfulness, of which no words could translate the tone and the vocal expression. “Now, here is poor Raoul, who is your son, I believe.”
“Yes, he is my son, monseigneur.”
“And the poor lad has been cut out by the king, and he frets.”
“Still better, monseigneur, he abstains.”
“You are going to let the boy rust in idleness; it is a mistake. Come, give him to me.”
“My wish is to keep him at home, monseigneur. I have no longer anything in the world but him, and as long as he likes to remain—”
“Well, well,” replied the duke. “I could, nevertheless, have soon put matters to rights again. I assure you, I think he has in him the stuff of which marechals of France are made; I have seen more than one produced from less likely rough material.”
“That is very possible, monseigneur; but
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