This cry roused d’Artagnan, and stirred in his heart the fibre of obedience. He shook his head, and without more hesitation, he walked straight up to Philippe, upon whose shoulder he laid his hand, saying, “Monsieur, you are my prisoner!” Philippe did not raise his eyes towards Heaven, nor stir from the spot, where he seemed nailed to the floor, his eye intently fixed upon the King, his brother. He reproached him by a sublime silence with all his misfortunes past, with all his tortures to come. Against this language of the soul Louis XIV felt he had no power; he cast down his eyes, and led away precipitately his brother and sister, forgetting his mother, sitting motionless within three paces of the son whom she left a second time to be condemned to death. Philippe approached Anne of Austria, and said to her in a soft and nobly agitated voice, “If I were not your son, I should curse you, my mother, for having rendered me so unhappy.”
D’Artagnan felt a shudder pass through the marrow of his bones. He bowed respectfully to the young Prince, and said as he bent, “Excuse me, Monseigneur; I am but a soldier, and my oaths are his who has just left the chamber.”
“Thank you, M. d’Artagnan; but what is become of M. d’Herblay?”
“M. d’Herblay is in safety, Monseigneur,” said a voice behind them; “and no one, while I live and am free, shall cause a hair to fall from his head.”
“M. Fouquet!” said the Prince, smiling sadly.
“Pardon me, Monseigneur,” said Fouquet, kneeling; “but he who is just gone out from hence was my guest.”
“Here are,” murmured Philippe, with a sigh, “brave friends and good hearts. They make me regret the world. On, M. d’Artagnan, I follow you!”
At the moment the captain of the Musketeers was about to leave the room with his prisoner, Colbert appeared, and after delivering to d’Artagnan an order from the King, retired. D’Artagnan read the paper, and then crushed it in his hand with rage.
“What is it?” asked the Prince.
“Read, Monseigneur,” replied the musketeer.
Philippe read the following words, hastily traced by the hand of the King:-
“M. d’Artagnan will conduct the prisoner to the ile Ste. Marguerite. He will cover his face with an iron visor, which the prisoner cannot raise without peril of his life.”
“It is just,” said Philippe, with resignation; “I am ready.”
“Aramis was right,” said Fouquet, in a low voice to the musketeer, “this one is quite as much of a King as the other.”
“More,” replied d’Artagnan. “He needs only you and me.”
Chapter LIII: In Which Porthos Thinks He Is Pursuing a Duchy
ARAMIS and Porthos, having profited by the time granted them by Fouquet, did honor to the French cavalry by their speed. Porthos did not clearly understand for what kind of mission he was forced to display so much velocity; but as he saw Aramis spurring on furiously, he, Porthos, spurred on in the same manner. They had soon, in this manner, placed twelve leagues between them and Vaux; they were then obliged to change horses, and organize a sort of post arrangement. It was during a relay that Porthos ventured to interrogate Aramis discreetly.
“Hush!” replied the latter; “know only that our fortune depends upon our speed.”
As if Porthos had still been the musketeer of 1626, without a sou or a maille, he pushed forward. The magic word “fortune” always means something in the human ear. It means enough for those who have nothing; it means too much for those who have enough.
“I shall be made a duke!” said Porthos, aloud. He was speaking to himself.
“That is possible,” replied Aramis, smiling after his own fashion, as the horse of Porthos passed him. The head of Aramis was, notwithstanding, on fire; the activity of the body had not yet succeeded in subduing that of the mind. All that there is in raging passions, in severe toothaches, or mortal threats twisted, gnawed, and groaned in the thoughts of the vanquished prelate. His countenance exhibited very visible traces of this rude combat. Free upon the highway to abandon himself to every impression of the moment, Aramis did not fail to swear at every start of his horse, at every inequality in the road. Pale, at times inundated with boiling sweats, then again dry and icy, he beat his horses and made the blood stream from their sides. Porthos, whose dominant fault was not sensibility, groaned at this. Thus they travelled on for eight long hours, and then arrived at Orleans. It was four o’clock in the afternoon. Aramis, searching his recollections, judged that nothing demonstrated pursuit to be possible. It would be without example that a troop capable of taking him and Porthos should be furnished with relays sufficient to perform forty leagues in eight hours. Thus, admitting pursuit, which was not at all manifest, the fugitives were five hours in advance of their pursuers.