“Something,” said Athos, “wills that I should go no farther. Support me,” added he, stretching out his arms; “quick! come closer! I feel all my muscles relax, and I shall fall from my horse.”
The valet had seen the movement made by his master at the moment he received the order. He went up to him quickly, and received the count in his arms; and as they were still sufficiently near the house for the servants, who had remained at the door to watch their master’s departure, to perceive the disorder in the usually regular proceeding of the count, the valet called his comrades by gesture and voice, and all hastened to his assistance. Athos had gone but a few steps on his return when he felt himself better again. His strength seemed to revive, and with it the desire to go to Blois. He made his horse turn round; but at the animal’s first steps, he sank again into a state of torpor and anguish.
“Well, decidedly,” said he, “IT IS WILLED that I should stay at home.” His people flocked around him; they lifted him from his horse and carried him as quickly as possible into the house. Everything was soon prepared in his chamber, and they put him to bed.
“You will be sure to remember,” said he, disposing himself to sleep, “that I expect letters from Africa this very day.”
“Monsieur will no doubt hear with pleasure that Blaisois’s son is gone on horseback, to gain an hour over the courier of Blois,” replied his valet de chambre.
“Thank you,” replied Athos, with his kindly smile.
The count fell asleep, but his disturbed slumber resembled suffering more than repose. The servant who watched him saw several times the expression of interior torture imprinted upon his features. Perhaps Athos was dreaming.
The day passed away. Blaisois’s son returned; the courier had brought no news. The count reckoned the minutes with despair; he shuddered when those minutes had formed an hour. The idea that he was forgotten seized him once, and brought on a fearful pang of the heart. Everybody in the house had given up all hopes of the courier, his hour had long passed. Four times the express sent to Blois had repeated his journey, and there was nothing to the address of the count. Athos knew that the courier arrived only once a week. Here, then, was a delay of eight mortal days to be endured. He began the night in this painful persuasion. All that a sick man, irritated by suffering, can add of melancholy suppositions to probabilities always sad, Athos heaped up during the early hours of this dismal night. The fever rose; it invaded the chest, where the fire soon caught, according to the expression of the physician, who had been brought back from Blois by the son of Blaisois on his last journey. It soon reached the head. The physician made two successive bleedings, which unlodged it, but left the patient very weak, and without power of action except in his brain; and yet this redoubtable fever had ceased. It attacked with its last strokes the stiffened extremities; and as midnight struck it yielded.
The physician, seeing the incontestable improvement, returned to Blois, after having ordered some prescriptions, declaring that the count was saved. Then began for Athos a strange, indefinable state. Free to think, his mind turned towards Raoul, that beloved son. His imagination painted the fields of Africa in the environs of Djidgelli, where M. de Beaufort was to land his army. There were gray rocks, rendered green in certain parts by the waters of the sea when it lashed the shore in storms and tempests. Beyond the shore, strewed over with these rocks like tombs, ascended, in form of an amphitheatre among mastic-trees and cactus, a sort of village, full of smoke, confused noises, and terrified movements. Suddenly, from the bosom of this smoke arose a flame, which, gaining headway, presently covered the whole surface of this village, and increased by degrees, including in its red vortices tears, cries, arms extended towards heaven.
There was, for a moment, a frightful pele-mele of timbers falling, of swords broken, of stones calcined, of trees burned and disappearing. It was a strange thing that in this chaos, in which Athos distinguished raised arms, in which he heard cries, sobs, and groans, he did not see one human figure. The cannon thundered at a distance, musketry cracked, the sea moaned, flocks made their escape, bounding over the verdant slope; but not a soldier to apply the match to the batteries of cannon, not a sailor to assist in manoeuvering the fleet, not a shepherd for the flocks. After the ruin of the village and the destruction of the forts which commanded it,- a ruin and a destruction operated magically without the cooperation of a single human being,- the flame was extinguished, the smoke began to descend, then diminished in intensity, paled, and disappeared entirely. Night then came over the scene,- a night dark upon the earth, brilliant in the firmament. The large, blazing stars which sparkled in the African sky shone without lighting anything even around them.