“My mother,” said he, “do you not acknowledge your son, since everyone here has forgotten his king!” Anne of Austria started, and raised her arms towards Heaven, without being able to articulate a single word.
“My mother,” said Philippe, with a calm voice, “do you not acknowledge your son?” And this time, in his turn, Louis drew back.
As to Anne of Austria, struck suddenly in head and heart with fell remorse, she lost her equilibrium. No one aiding her, for all were petrified, she sank back in her fauteuil, breathing a weak, trembling sigh. Louis could not endure the spectacle and the affront. He bounded towards d’Artagnan, over whose brain a vertigo was stealing and who staggered as he caught at the door for support.
“À moi! mousquetaire!” said he. “Look us in the face and say which is the paler, he or I!”
This cry roused d’Artagnan, and stirred in his heart the fibers of obedience. He shook his head, and, without more hesitation, he walked straight up to Philippe, on whose shoulder he laid his hand, saying, “Monsieur, you are my prisoner!”
Philippe did not raise his eyes towards Heaven, nor stir from the spot, where he seemed nailed to the floor, his eye intently fixed upon the king his brother. He reproached him with a sublime silence for all misfortunes past, all tortures to come. Against this language of the soul the king felt he had no power; he cast down his eyes, dragging away precipitately his brother and sister, forgetting his mother sitting motionless within three paces of the son whom she left a second time to be condemned to death. Philippe approached Anne of Austria, and said to her, in a soft and nobly agitated voice:
“If I were not your son, I should curse you, my mother, for having rendered me so unhappy.”
D’Artagnan felt a shudder pass through the marrow of his bones. He bowed respectfully to the young prince, and said as he bent, “Excuse me, Monseigneur, I am but a soldier, and my oaths are his who has just left the chamber.”
“Thank you, M. d’Artagnan. … What has become of M. d’Herblay?”
“M. d’Herblay is in safety, Monseigneur,” said a voice behind them; “and no one, while I live and am free, shall cause a hair to fall from his head.”
“Monsieur Fouquet!” said the prince, smiling sadly.
“Pardon me, Monseigneur,” said Fouquet, kneeling, “but he who is just gone out from hence was my guest.”
“Here are,” murmured Philippe, with a sigh, “brave friends and good hearts. They make me regret the world. On, M. d’Artagnan, I follow you.”
At the moment the captain of the Musketeers was about to leave the room with his prisoner, Colbert appeared, and, after remitting an order from the king to d’Artagnan, retired. D’Artagnan read the paper, and then crushed it in his hand with rage.
“What is it?” asked the prince.
“Read, Monseigneur,” replied the musketeer.
Philippe read the following words, hastily traced by the hand of the king:
“M. d’Artagnan will conduct the prisoner to the Île Sainte-Marguerite. He will cover his face with an iron vizor, which the prisoner shall never raise except at peril of his life.”
“That is just,” said Philippe, with resignation; “I am ready.”
“Aramis was right,” said Fouquet, in a low voice, to the musketeer, “this one is every whit as much a king as the other.”
“More so!” replied d’Artagnan. “He wanted only you and me.”
232
In Which Porthos Thinks He Is Pursuing a Duchy
Aramis and Porthos, having profited by the time granted them by Fouquet, did honor to the French cavalry by their speed. Porthos did not clearly understand on what kind of mission he was forced to display so much velocity; but as he saw Aramis spurring on furiously, he, Porthos, spurred on in the same way. They had soon, in this manner, placed twelve leagues between them and Vaux; they were then obliged to change horses, and organize a sort of post arrangement. It was during a relay that Porthos ventured to interrogate Aramis discreetly.
“Hush!” replied the latter, “know only that our fortune depends on our speed.”
As if Porthos had still been the musketeer, without a sou or a maille of 1626, he pushed forward. That magic word “fortune” always means something in the human ear. It means enough for those who have nothing; it means too much for those who have enough.
“I shall be made a duke!” said Porthos, aloud. He was speaking to himself.
“That is possible,” replied Aramis, smiling after his own fashion, as Porthos’s horse passed him. Aramis felt, notwithstanding, as though his brain were on fire; the activity of the body had not yet succeeded in subduing that of the mind. All there is of raging passion, mental toothache or mortal threat, raged, gnawed and grumbled in the thoughts of the unhappy prelate. His countenance exhibited visible traces of this rude combat. Free on the highway to abandon himself to every impression of the moment, Aramis did not fail to swear at every start of his horse, at every inequality in the road. Pale, at times inundated with boiling sweats, then again dry and icy, he flogged his horses till the blood streamed from their sides. Porthos, whose dominant fault was not sensibility, groaned at this. Thus traveled they on for eight long hours, and then arrived at Orléans. It was four o’clock in the afternoon. Aramis, on observing this, judged that nothing showed pursuit to be a possibility. It would be without example that a troop capable of taking him and Porthos should be furnished with relays sufficient to perform
