Raoul shook his head sadly, and leaned upon the shoulder of the count, neither of them finding another word in their hearts, which were ready to overflow.
All at once a noise of horses and voices from the extremity of the road to Blois attracted their attention that way. Mounted torch-bearers shook their torches merrily among the trees of their route, and turned round from time to time to avoid distancing the horsemen who followed them. These flames, this noise, this dust of a dozen richly caparisoned horses, formed a strange contrast in the middle of the night with the melancholy, funereal disappearance of the two shadows of Aramis and Porthos. Athos went towards the house; but he had hardly reached the parterre when the entrance gate appeared in a blaze; all the flambeaux stopped and appeared to inflame the road. A cry was heard of “M. le Duc de Beaufort!” and Athos sprang towards the door of his house. But the duke had already alighted from his horse, and was looking around him.
“I am here, Monseigneur,” said Athos.
“Ah, good-evening, dear count,” said the Prince, with that frank cordiality which won him so many hearts. “Is it too late for a friend?”
“Ah, my dear Prince, come in!” said the count.
And M. de Beaufort leaning on the arm of Athos, they entered the house, followed by Raoul, who walked respectfully and modestly among the officers of the Prince, with several of whom he was acquainted.
Chapter LV: M. de Beaufort
THE Prince turned around at the moment when Raoul, in order to leave him alone with Athos, was shutting the door, and preparing to go with the other officers into an adjoining apartment.
“Is that the young man I have heard Monsieur the Prince speak so highly of?” asked M. de Beaufort.
“It is, Monseigneur.”
“He is quite the soldier; let him stay, Count, we cannot spare him.”
“Remain, Raoul, since Monseigneur Permits it,” said Athos.
“Ma foi! he is tall and handsome!” continued the duke. “Will you give him to me, Monseigneur, if I ask him of you?”
“How am I to understand you, Monseigneur?” said Athos.
“Why, I call upon you to bid you farewell.”
“Farewell?”
“Yes, in good truth. Have you no idea of what I am about to be?”
“Why, what you have always been, Monseigneur,- a valiant Prince and an excellent gentleman.”
“I am going to be an African Prince,- a Bedouin gentleman. The King is sending me to make conquests among the Arabs.”
“What do you tell me, Monseigneur?”
“Strange, is it not? I, the Parisian par essence,- I, who have reigned in the faubourgs, and have been called King of the Halles,- I am going to pass from the Place Maubert to the minarets of Djidgelli; I become from a Frondeur an adventurer!”
“Oh, Monseigneur, if you did not yourself tell me that-”
“It would not be credible, would it? Believe me, nevertheless, and let us bid each other farewell. This is what comes of getting into favor again.”
“Into favor?”
“Yes. You smile? Ah, my dear count, do you know why I have accepted this enterprise; can you guess?”
“Because your Highness loves glory above everything.”
“Oh, no; there is no glory in firing muskets at savages. I see no glory in that, for my part, and it is more probable that I shall there meet with something else. But I have wished, and still wish earnestly, my dear count, that my life should have this last facet, after all the whimsical exhibitions I have made in fifty years. For, in short, you must admit that it is sufficiently strange to be born the grandson of a king, to have made war against kings, to have reckoned among the powers of the age, to have maintained my rank, to feel Henry IV within me, to be great Admiral of France, and then to go and get killed at Djidgelli among all those Turks, Saracens, and Moors!”
“Monseigneur, you dwell strangely upon that subject,” said Athos, in an agitated voice. “How can you suppose that so brilliant a destiny will be extinguished in that miserable scene?”
“And can you believe, just and simple man as you are, that if I go into Africa for this ridiculous motive, I will not endeavor to come out of it without ridicule? Will I not give the world cause to speak of me? and to be spoken of nowadays, when there are Monsieur the Prince, M. de Turenne, and many others, my contemporaries, I, Admiral of France, grandson of Henry IV, King of Paris,- have I anything left but to get myself killed? Cordieu! I will be talked of, I tell you; I will be killed, whether or not,- if not there, somewhere else.”