Man in the Iron Mask by Dumas, Alexandre part two

Death had been kind and mild to this noble creature. It had spared him the tortures of the agony, the convulsions of the last departure; it had opened with an indulgent finger the gates of eternity to that noble soul worthy of all its respect. God had no doubt ordered it thus, that the pious remembrance of this death should remain in the hearts of those present and in the memory of other men,- a death which made the passage from this life to the other seem desirable to those whose existence upon this earth leads them not to dread the last judgment. Athos preserved, even in the eternal sleep, his placid and sincere smile,- an ornament which was to accompany him to the tomb. The quietude of his features, the peacefulness of his departure, made his servants for a long time doubt whether he had really quitted life.

The count’s people wished to remove Grimaud, who from a distance devoured the face become so pale, and did not approach from the pious fear of bringing to him the breath of death. But Grimaud, fatigued as he was, refused to leave the room. He seated himself upon the threshold, watching his master with the vigilance of a sentinel and jealous to receive either his first waking look or his last dying sigh. The noises were all hushed in the house, and every one respected the slumber of their lord. But Grimaud, anxiously listening, perceived that the count no longer breathed. He raised himself, with his hands resting on the ground, and looked to see if there did not appear some motion in the body of his master. Nothing! Fear seized him; he rose up, and at the very moment heard some one coming up the stairs. A noise of spurs knocking against a sword- a warlike sound, familiar to his ears- stopped him as he was going towards the bed of Athos. A voice more sonorous still than brass or steel resounded within three paces of him.

“Athos! Athos! my friend!” cried this voice, agitated even to tears.

“M. le Chevalier d’Artagnan!” faltered out Grimaud.

“Where is he? Where is he?” continued the musketeer.

Grimaud seized his arm in his bony fingers, and pointed to the bed, upon the sheets of which the livid tints of the dead already showed.

A choked breath, the opposite to a sharp cry, swelled the throat of d’Artagnan. He advanced on tiptoe, trembling, frightened at the noise his feet made upon the floor, and his heart rent by a nameless agony. He placed his ear to the breast of Athos, his face to the count’s mouth. Neither noise nor breath! D’Artagnan drew back. Grimaud, who had followed him with his eyes, and for whom each of his movements had been a revelation, came timidly and seated himself at the foot of the bed and closely pressed his lips to the sheet which was raised by the stiffened feet of his master. Then large drops began to flow from his red eyes. This old man in despair, who wept, bowed down without uttering a word, presented the most moving spectacle that d’Artagnan, in a life so filled with emotion, had ever seen.

The captain remained standing in contemplation before that smiling dead man, who seemed to have kept his last thought to give to his best friend, to the man he had loved next to Raoul,- a gracious welcome even beyond life; and as if to reply to that exalted flattery of hospitality, d’Artagnan went and kissed Athos fervently on the brow, and with his trembling fingers closed his eyes. Then he seated himself by the pillow without dread of that dead man, who had been so kind and affectionate to him for thirty-five years; he fed himself greedily with the remembrances which the noble visage of the count brought to his mind in crowds,- some blooming and charming as that smile; some dark, dismal, and icy as that face with its eyes closed for eternity.

All at once, the bitter flood which mounted from minute to minute invaded his heart and swelled his breast almost to bursting. Incapable of mastering his emotion, he arose; and tearing himself violently from the chamber where he had just found dead him to whom he came to report the news of the death of Porthos, he uttered sobs so heart-rending that the servants, who seemed only to wait for an explosion of grief, answered to it by their lugubrious clamors, and the dogs of the late count by their lamentable howlings. Grimaud was the only one who did not lift up his voice. Even in the paroxysm of his grief he would not have dared to profane the dead, or for the first time disturb the slumber of his master. Besides, Athos had accustomed him never to speak.

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