With these words, Philippe, notwithstanding an instinctive repugnance of feeling, and in spite of the shudder of terror which mastered his will, threw himself on the royal bed, and forced his muscles to press the still warm place where Louis XIV had lain, while he buried his burning face in the handkerchief still moistened by his brother’s tears. With his head thrown back and buried in the soft down of his pillow, Philippe perceived above him the crown of France, held, as we have stated, by the angel with the golden wings.
Imagine, then, the royal intruder, his eyes gloomy, his body trembling. He is like a tiger led out of his way by a night of storm, who comes through the reeds by way of a ravine unknown to him, to lie down in the cave of an absent lion. The feline odor has attracted him,- that warm, moist atmosphere of his ordinary habitation. He has found a bed of dry herbs, and bones pulverized and pasty like marrow. He arrives; he turns about his flaming eyes, piercing the gloom; he shakes his streaming limbs and his body, covered with mire, and lies down heavily, his large nose resting on his enormous paws,- ready to sleep, but ready also to fight. From time to time the lightning blazing in the recesses of the cave, the noise of clashing branches, the sound of falling stones, the vague apprehension of danger, draw him from the lethargy occasioned by fatigue.
A man may be ambitious of lying in a lion’s den, but can hardly hope to sleep there quietly. Philippe listened attentively to every sound, his heart almost stifled by all his fears; but confident in his own strength, which was increased by the force of an overpowering resolute determination, he waited until some decisive circumstance should permit him to judge for himself. He hoped that some great danger would show him the way, like those phosphoric lights of the tempest which show the sailors the height of the waves against which they have to struggle. But nothing happened. Silence, the mortal enemy of restless hearts, the mortal enemy of ambitious minds, shrouded in the thickness of its gloom during the remainder of the night the future King of France, who lay there sheltered beneath his stolen crown. Towards the morning a shadow, rather than a body, glided into the royal chamber; Philippe expected his approach, and neither expressed nor exhibited any surprise.
“Well, M. d’Herblay?” he said.
“Well, Sire, all is done.”
“How?”
“Exactly as we expected.”
“Did he resist?”
“Terribly! tears and entreaties.”
“And then?”
“Then stupor.”
“But at last?”
“Oh, at last a complete victory, and absolute silence.”
“Did the governor of the Bastille suspect anything?”
“Nothing.”
“The resemblance, however-”
“That was the cause of the success.”
“But the prisoner cannot fail to explain himself. Think well of that. I have myself been able to do that,- I, who had to contend with a power much better established than is mine.”
“I have already provided for everything. In a few days, sooner perhaps, we will take the captive out of his prison, and will send him out of the country to a place of exile so remote-”
“People can return from exile, M. d’Herblay.”
“To a place of exile so distant, I was going to say, that human strength and the duration of human life would not be enough for his return.”
And once more a cold look of intelligence passed between Aramis and the young King.
“And M. du Vallon?” asked Philippe, in order to change the conversation.
“He will be presented to you to-day, and confidentially will congratulate you on your escape from the danger to which that usurper has exposed you.”
“What is to be done with him?”
“With M. du Vallon?”
“A dukedom, I suppose.”
“Yes, a dukedom,” replied Aramis, smiling in a significant manner.
“Why do you laugh, M. d’Herblay?”
“I laugh at the extreme caution of your Majesty.”
“Cautious! why so?”
“Your Majesty is doubtless afraid that that poor Porthos may probably become a troublesome witness; and you wish to get rid of him.”
“What! in making him a duke?”
“Certainly; you would assuredly kill him, for he would die from joy, and the secret would die with him.”