serve it in word, in thought, and in action. I swore, and
God and the dead were witnesses to my oath. During ten
years, sire, I have not so often as I desired had occasion
to keep it. I am a soldier of your majesty, and nothing
else; and, on calling me nearer to you, I do not change my
master, I only change my garrison.”
Raoul was silent, and bowed. Louis still listened after he
had done speaking.
“Mordioux!” cried D’Artagnan, “that was well spoken! was it
not, your majesty? A good race! a noble race!”
“Yes,” murmured the agitated king, without, however, daring
to manifest his emotion, for it had no other cause than
contact with a nature intrinsically noble. “Yes, monsieur,
you say truly: — wherever you were, you were the king’s.
But in changing your garrison, believe me you will find an
advancement of which you are worthy.”
Raoul saw that this ended what the king had to say to him.
And with the perfect tact which characterized his refined
nature, he bowed and retired.
“Is there anything else, monsieur, of which you have to
inform me?” said the king, when he found himself again alone
with D’Artagnan.
“Yes, sire, and I kept that news for the last, for it is
sad, and will clothe European royalty in mourning.”
“What do you tell me?”
“Sire, in passing through Blois, a word, a sad word, echoed
from the palace, struck my ear.”
“In truth, you terrify me, M. d’Artagnan.”
“Sire, this word was pronounced to me by a piqueur, who wore
crape on his arm.”
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“My uncle, Gaston of Orleans, perhaps.”
“Sire, he has rendered his last sigh.”
“And I was not warned of it!” cried the king, whose royal
susceptibility saw an insult in the absence of this
intelligence.
“Oh! do not be angry, sire,” said D’Artagnan; “neither the
couriers of Paris, nor the couriers of the whole world, can
travel with your servant; the courier from Blois will not be
here these two hours, and he rides well, I assure you,
seeing that I only passed him on the thither side of
Orleans.”
“My uncle Gaston,” murmured Louis, pressing his hand to his
brow, and comprising in those three words all that his
memory recalled of that symbol of opposing sentiments.
“Eh! yes, sire, it is thus,” said D’Artagnan,
philosophically replying to the royal thought, “it is thus
the past flies away.”
“That is true, monsieur, that is true; but there remains for
us, thank God! the future; and we will try to make it not
too dark.”
“I feel confidence in your majesty on that head,” said
D’Artagnan, bowing, “and now —- ”
“You are right, monsieur; I had forgotten the hundred
leagues you have just ridden. Go, monsieur, take care of one
of the best of soldiers, and when you have reposed a little,
come and place yourself at my disposal.”
“Sire, absent or present, I am always yours.”
D’Artagnan bowed and retired. Then, as if he had only come
from Fontainebleau, he quickly traversed the Louvre to
rejoin Bragelonne.
CHAPTER 77
A Lover and his Mistress
Whilst the wax-lights were burning in the castle of Blois,
around the inanimate body of Gaston of Orleans, that last
representative of the past; whilst the bourgeois of the city
were thinking out his epitaph, which was far from being a
panegyric; whilst madame the dowager, no longer remembering
that in her young days she had loved that senseless corpse
to such a degree as to fly the paternal palace for his sake,
was making, within twenty paces of the funeral apartment,
her little calculations of interest and her little
sacrifices of pride; other interests and other prides were
in agitation in all the parts of the castle into which a
living soul could penetrate. Neither the lugubrious sounds
of the bells, nor the voices of the chanters, nor the
splendor of the waxlights through the windows, nor the
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preparations for the funeral, had power to divert the
attention of two persons, placed at a window of the interior
court —a window that we are acquainted with, and which