People respected Athos, we say, and they loved him. The physician could not bear to see his people weep, and to see flock round him the poor of the canton, to whom Athos gave 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 down and devoured more mortally every day a man but lately so full of life and of a desire to live. He remarked upon the cheeks of Athos the purple of fever, which fires itself and feeds 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 count spoke to nobody, we say; 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 belongs no longer to earth. The doctor remained for several hours studying this painful struggle of the will against a superior power; he was terrified at seeing those eyes always fixed, always directed towards an invisible object, at seeing beat with the same movement that heart from which never a sigh arose to vary the melancholy state. Sometimes the acuteness of pain awakens hope in the mind of a physician. Half a day passed away thus. The doctor formed his resolution like a brave man, like a man of firm mind; he issued suddenly from his place of retreat, and went straight up to Athos, who saw him without evincing more surprise than if he had not perceived the apparition.
“Monsieur the Count, 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 with difficulty roused himself from his preoccupation.
“What is the matter, Doctor?” asked the count, after a silence.
“Why, the matter is, you are ill, Monsieur, and have had no advice.”
“I, ill!” said Athos, smiling.
“Fever, consumption, weakness, decay, Monsieur the Count.”
“Weakness!” replied Athos; “is that possible? I do not get up.”
“Come, come, Monsieur the Count, no subterfuges; you are a good Christian?”
“I hope so,” said Athos.
“Would you kill yourself?”
“Never, Doctor.”
“Well, Monsieur, you are in a fair way of doing so; to remain thus is suicide. Get well, Monsieur the Count! 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 value more my flowers.”
“You have a concealed grief.”
“Concealed! not at all. I have the absence of my son, Doctor,- that is my malady, and I do not conceal it.”
“Monsieur the Count, your son lives, he is strong, he has all the future before him of men of his merit and of his race; live for him-”
“But I do live, Doctor; oh! be satisfied of that,” added he, with a melancholy smile. “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 allow my life to be in a state of suspense. A forgetful, dissipated, indifferent life would be above my strength now that I have Raoul no longer with me. You do not ask the lamp to burn when the spark has not lighted the flame; do not ask me to live noisily and brilliantly. I vegetate, I prepare myself, I wait. Look, Doctor; you remember those soldiers we have so often seen together at the ports, where they were waiting to embark,- lying down, indifferent, half upon one element, half upon the other. They were neither at the place where the sea was going to carry them nor at the place where the earth was going to lose them; baggage prepared, minds upon the stretch, looks fixed,- they waited. I repeat that word; it is the one which describes my present life. Lying down, like the soldiers, my ear on the alert for the reports 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!”