“RAOUL, VICOMTE DE BRAGELONNE.”
“The letter is very well,” said the captain. “I have only one fault to find with it.”
“Tell me what that is,” said Raoul.
“It is that it tells everything except the thing which exhales, like a mortal poison, from your eyes and from your heart; except the senseless love which still consumes you.” Raoul grew paler, but remained silent.
“Why did you not write simply these words:-
‘MADEMOISELLE: Instead of cursing you, I love you and I die.’?”
“That is true,” exclaimed Raoul, with a sinister joy.
And tearing the letter he had just taken back, he wrote the following words upon a leaf of his tablets:-
“To procure the happiness of once more telling you that I love you, I commit the baseness of writing to you; and to punish myself for that baseness, I die.”
And he signed it. “You will give her these tablets, Captain, will you not?”
“When?” asked the latter.
“On the day,” said Bragelonne, pointing to the last sentence,- “on the day when you can place a date under these words.” And he sprang away quickly to join Athos, who was returning with slow steps.
As they re-entered the fort, the sea rose with that rapid, gusty vehemence which characterizes the Mediterranean; the ill-humor of the element became a tempest. Something shapeless, and tossed about violently by the waves, appeared just off the coast.
“What is that?” said Athos,- “a wrecked boat?”
“No, it is not a boat,” said d’Artagnan.
“Pardon me,” said Raoul; “there is a bark gaining the port rapidly.”
“Yes, there is a bark in the creek, which is prudently seeking shelter here; but that which Athos points to in the sand is not a boat at all,- it has run aground.”
“Yes, yes, I see it.”
“It is the carriage-case, which I threw into the sea after landing the prisoner.”
“Well,” said Athos, “if you will take my advice, d’Artagnan, you will burn it, in order that no vestige of it may remain; or the fishermen of Antibes, who have believed they had to do with the Devil, will endeavor to prove that your prisoner was but a man.”
“Your advice is good, Athos, and I will this night have it carried out, or rather, I will carry it out myself; but let us go in, for the rain falls heavily, and the lightning is terrific.”
As they were passing over the ramparts to a gallery of which d’Artagnan had the key, they saw M. de Saint-Mars directing his steps towards the chamber inhabited by the prisoner. Upon a sign from d’Artagnan, they concealed themselves in an angle of the staircase.
“What is it?” said Athos.
“You will see. Look! the prisoner is returning from chapel.”
And by the red flashes of the lightning against the violet fog which the wind spread upon the background of the sky, they saw pass gravely, at six paces behind the governor, a man clothed in black and masked by a visor of polished steel soldered to a helmet of the same nature, which altogether enveloped the whole of his head. The fire of the heavens cast red reflections upon the polished surface, and these reflections, flying off capriciously, seemed to be angry looks launched by this unfortunate, instead of imprecations. In the middle of the gallery, the prisoner stopped for a moment to contemplate the infinite horizon, to inhale the sulphurous perfumes of the tempest, to drink in thirstily the hot rain, and to breathe a sigh resembling a smothered roar.
“Come on, Monsieur,” said De Saint-Mars, sharply to the prisoner, for he already became uneasy at seeing him look so long beyond the walls. “Monsieur, come on!”
“Say Monseigneur!” cried Athos, from his corner, with a voice so solemn and terrible that the governor trembled from head to foot. Athos always wished respect to be paid to fallen majesty. The prisoner turned round.
“Who spoke?” asked De Saint-Mars.
“It was I,” replied d’Artagnan, showing himself promptly. “You know that is the order.”
“Call me neither Monsieur nor Monseigneur,” said the prisoner in his turn, in a voice that penetrated to the very soul of Raoul; “call me ACCURSED!” He passed on, and the iron door creaked after him.