“You!” replied the captain, in a stern voice, “you here!—oh! Madame, I should better have liked to see you decked with flowers in the mansion of the Comte de la Fère. You would have wept less—and they too—and I!”
“Monsieur!” said she, sobbing.
“For it was you,” added this pitiless friend of the dead—“it was you who sped these two men to the grave.”
“Oh! spare me!”
“God forbid, Madame, that I should offend a woman, or that I should make her weep in vain; but I must say that the place of the murderer is not upon the grave of her victims.” She wished to reply.
“What I now tell you,” added he, coldly, “I have already told the king.”
She clasped her hands. “I know,” said she, “I have caused the death of the Vicomte de Bragelonne.”
“Ah! you know it?”
“The news arrived at court yesterday. I have traveled during the night forty leagues to come and ask pardon of the comte, whom I supposed to be still living, and to pray God, on the tomb of Raoul, that he would send me all the misfortunes I have merited, except a single one. Now, Monsieur, I know that the death of the son has killed the father; I have two crimes to reproach myself with; I have two punishments to expect from Heaven.”
“I will repeat to you, Mademoiselle,” said d’Artagnan, “what M. de Bragelonne said of you, at Antibes, when he already meditated death: ‘If pride and coquetry have misled her, I pardon her while despising her. If love has produced her error, I pardon her, but I swear that no one could have loved her as I have done.’ ”
“You know,” interrupted Louise, “that for my love I was about to sacrifice myself; you know whether I suffered when you met me lost, dying, abandoned. Well! never have I suffered so much as now; because then I hoped, desired—now I have no longer anything to wish for; because this death drags all my joy into the tomb; because I can no longer dare to love without remorse, and I feel that he whom I love—oh! it is but just!—will repay me with the tortures I have made others undergo.”
D’Artagnan made no reply; he was too well convinced that she was not mistaken.
“Well, then,” added she, “dear Monsieur d’Artagnan, do not overwhelm me today, I again implore you! I am like the branch torn from the trunk, I no longer hold to anything in this world—a current drags me on, I know not whither. I love madly, even to the point of coming to tell it, wretch that I am, over the ashes of the dead, and I do not blush for it—I have no remorse on this account. Such love is a religion. Only, as hereafter you will see me alone, forgotten, disdained; as you will see me punished, as I am destined to be punished, spare me in my ephemeral happiness, leave it to me for a few days, for a few minutes. Now, even at the moment I am speaking to you, perhaps it no longer exists. My God! this double murder is perhaps already expiated!”
While she was speaking thus, the sound of voices and of horses drew the attention of the captain. M. de Saint-Aignan came to seek La Vallière. “The king,” he said, “is a prey to jealousy and uneasiness.” Saint-Aignan did not perceive d’Artagnan, half concealed by the trunk of a chestnut-tree which shaded the double grave. Louise thanked Saint-Aignan, and dismissed him with a gesture. He rejoined the party outside the enclosure.
“You see, Madame,” said the captain bitterly to the young woman—“you see your happiness still lasts.”
The young woman raised her head with a solemn air. “A day will come,” said she, “when you will repent of having so misjudged me. On that day, it is I who will pray God to forgive you for having been unjust towards me. Besides, I shall suffer so much that you yourself will be the first to pity my sufferings. Do not reproach me with my fleeting happiness, Monsieur d’Artagnan; it costs me dear, and I have not paid all my debt.” Saying these words, she again knelt down, softly and affectionately.
“Pardon me the last time, my affianced Raoul!” said she. “I have broken our chain; we are both destined to die of grief. It is thou who departest first; fear nothing, I shall follow thee. See, only, that I have not been base, and that I have come to bid thee this last adieu. The Lord is my witness, Raoul, that if with my life I could have redeemed thine, I would have given that life without hesitation. I could not give my love. Once more, forgive me, dearest, kindest friend.”
She strewed a few sweet flowers on the freshly sodded earth; then, wiping the tears from her eyes, the heavily stricken lady bowed to d’Artagnan, and disappeared.
The captain watched the departure of the horses, horsemen, and carriage, then crossing his arms upon his swelling chest, “When will it be my turn to depart?” said he, in an agitated voice. “What is there left for man after youth, love, glory, friendship, strength, and wealth have disappeared? That rock, under which sleeps Porthos, who possessed all I have named; this moss, under which repose Athos and Raoul, who possessed much more!”
He hesitated for a moment, with a dull eye; then, drawing himself up, “Forward! still forward!” said he. “When it is time, God will tell me, as he foretold the others.”
He touched the earth, moistened with the evening dew, with the ends of his fingers, signed himself as if he had been at the bénitier in church, and retook alone—ever alone—the road to Paris.
Epilogue
Four years after
