Athos had seated himself with his son upon the moss, among the brambles of the promontory. Around their heads passed and repassed large bats, carried along in the fearful whirl of their blind chase. The feet of Raoul were across the edge of the cliff, and hung in that void which engenders vertigo and incites to self-destruction. When the moon had risen to its full height, caressing with its light the neighboring peaks, when the watery mirror was illumined to its full extent, and the little red fires had made their openings in the black masses of every ship, Athos collected all his ideas and all his courage, and said, “God has made all that we see, Raoul; he has made us also,- poor atoms mixed up with this great universe. We shine like those fires and those stars; we sigh like those waves; we suffer like those great ships, which are worn out in ploughing the waves, in obeying the wind which urges them towards an end, as the breath of God blows us towards a port. Everything likes to live, Raoul; and all is beautiful in living things.”
“Monsieur,” said Raoul, “we have before us a beautiful spectacle!”
“How good d’Artagnan is!” interrupted Athos, suddenly; “and what a rare good fortune it is to be supported during a whole life by such a friend as he is! That is what you have wanted, Raoul.”
“A friend!” cried Raoul; “I have wanted a friend!”
“M. de Guiche is an agreeable companion,” resumed the count, coldly; “but I believe in the times in which you live men are more engaged in their own interests and their own pleasures than they were in our times. You have sought a secluded life; that is a great happiness, but you have lost your strength in it. We four, more weaned from these delicate abstractions which constitute your joy,- we found in ourselves much greater powers of resistance when misfortune came.”
“I have not interrupted you, Monsieur, to tell you that I had a friend, and that that friend is M. Guiche. Certainly he is good and generous, and moreover he loves me; but I have lived under the guard of another friendship, Monsieur, as precious and as strong as that of which you speak: your own.”
“I have not been a friend for you, Raoul,” said Athos.
“Eh, Monsieur! and in what respect not?”
“Because I have given you reason to think that life has but one face; because, sad and severe, alas! I have always cut off for you- without, God knows, wishing to do so- the joyous buds which incessantly spring from the tree of youth; so that at this moment I repent not having made of you a more expansive, dissipated, animated man.”
“I know why you say that, Monsieur. No, it is not you who have made me what I am,- it is love, which took possession of me at the time when children have only inclinations; it is the constancy natural to my character, which with other creatures is but a habit. I believed that I should always be as I was; I thought God had cast me in a path quite cleared, quite straight, bordered with fruits and flowers. I had watching over me your vigilance and your strength. I believed myself to be vigilant and strong. Nothing prepared me; I fell once, and that once deprived me of courage for the whole of my life. It is quite true that I wrecked myself. Oh, no, Monsieur! you are nothing in my past but a happiness; you are nothing in my future but a hope! No, I have no reproach to make against life, such as you made it for me; I bless you, and I love you ardently.”
“My dear Raoul, your words do me good; they prove to me that you will act a little for me in the time that is to come.”
“I shall act only for you, Monsieur.”
“Raoul, what I have never hitherto done with respect to you, I will hence. forward do; I will be your friend, not your father. We will live in expanding ourselves, instead of living and holding ourselves prisoners, when you come back; and that will be soon, will it not?”