D’Artagnan was holding out his hand to open the coffer, when a ball from the city crushed it in the arms of the officer, struck d’Artagnan full in the chest, and knocked him down upon a sloping heap of earth, while the fleurdelise baton, escaping from the broken sides of the box, came rolling under the powerless hand of the marshal. D’Artagnan endeavored to raise himself. It was thought he had been knocked down without being wounded. A terrible cry broke from the group of his frightened officers. The marshal was covered with blood; the paleness of death ascended slowly to his noble countenance. Leaning upon the arms which were held out on all sides to receive him, he was able once more to turn his eyes towards the place, and to distinguish the white flag at the crest of the principal bastion; his ears, already deaf to the sounds of life, caught feebly the rolling of the drum which announced the victory. Then, clasping in his nerveless hand the baton, ornamented with its fleurs-de-lis, he cast down upon it his eyes, which had no longer the power of looking upwards towards heaven, and fell back murmuring these strange words, which appeared to the surprised soldiers cabalistic words,- words which had formerly represented so many things upon earth, and which none but the dying man longer comprehended:
“Athos, Porthos, au revoir! Aramis, adieu forever!”
Of the four valiant men who history we have related, there now remained but one single body; God had taken back the souls.