Dumas, Alexandre – Ten Years Later
Raoul followed the well-known road, so dear to his memory,
which led from Blois to the residence of the Comte de la
Fere.
The reader will dispense with a second description of that
habitation: he, perhaps, has been with us there before, and
knows it. Only, since our last journey thither, the walls
had taken a grayer tint, and the brickwork assumed a more
harmonious copper tone; the trees had grown, and many that
then only stretched their slender branches along the tops of
the hedges, now bushy, strong, and luxuriant, cast around,
beneath boughs swollen with sap, great shadows of blossoms
of fruit for the benefit of the traveler.
Raoul perceived, from a distance, the two little turrets,
the dove-cote in the elms, and the flights of pigeons, which
wheeled incessantly around that brick cone, seemingly
without power to quit it, like the sweet memories which
hover round a spirit at peace.
As he approached, he heard the noise of the pulleys which
grated under the weight of the massy pails; he also fancied
he heard the melancholy moaning of the water which falls
back again into the wells — a sad, funereal, solemn sound,
which strikes the ear of the child and the poet — both
dreamers — which the English call splash; Arabian poets,
gasgachau; and which we Frenchmen, who would be poets, can
only translate by a paraphrase — the noise of water falling
into water.
It was more than a year since Raoul had been to visit his
father. He had passed the whole time in the household of M.
le Prince. In fact, after all the commotions of the Fronde,
of the early period of which we formerly attempted to give a
sketch, Louis de Conde had made a public, solemn, and frank
reconciliation with the court. During all the time that the
rupture between the king and the prince had lasted, the
prince, who had long entertained a great regard for
Bragelonne, had in vain offered him advantages of the most
dazzling kind for a young man. The Comte de la Fere, still
faithful to his principles of loyalty and royalty, one day
developed before his son in the vaults of Saint Denis, —
the Comte de la Fere, in the name of his son, had always
declined them. Moreover, instead of following M. de Conde in
his rebellion, the vicomte had followed M. de Turenne,
fighting for the king. Then when M. de Turenne, in his turn,
had appeared to abandon the royal cause, he had quitted M.
de Turenne, as he had quitted M. de Conde. It resulted from
this invariable line of conduct that, as Conde and Turenne
had never been conquerors of each other but under the
standard of the king, Raoul, however young, had ten
victories inscribed on his list of services, and not one
defeat from which his bravery or conscience had to suffer.
Raoul, therefore, had, in compliance with the wish of his
father, served obstinately and passively the fortunes of
Louis XIV., in spite of the tergiversations which were
endemic, and, it might be said, inevitable, at that period.
M. de Conde, on being restored to favor, had at once availed
himself of all the privileges of the amnesty to ask for many
things back again which had been granted him before, and
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Dumas, Alexandre – Ten Years Later
among others, Raoul. M. de la Fere, with his invariable good
sense, had immediately sent him again to the prince.
A year, then, had passed away since the separation of the
father and son; a few letters had softened, but not removed,
the pains of absence. We have seen that Raoul had left at
Blois another love in addition to filial love. But let us do
him this justice — if it had not been for chance and
Mademoiselle de Montalais, two great temptations, Raoul,
after delivering his message, would have galloped off
towards his father’s house, turning his head round, perhaps,
but without stopping for a single instant, even if Louise
had held out her arms to him.
So the first part of the journey was given by Raoul to