After which the eye darkened and closed, the face became pale, the hand whitened, and the Titan sank quite down, breathing his last sigh. With him sank the rock, which, even in his agony, he had still held up. The three men dropped the levers, which rolled upon the tumulary stone. Then, breathless, pale, his brow covered with sweat, Aramis listened, his breast oppressed, his heart ready to break.
Nothing more! The giant slept the eternal sleep, in the sepulcher which God had made to his measure.
CHAPTER CXXV.
THE EPITAPH OF PORTHOS.
Aramis, silent, icy, trembling like a timid child, arose shivering from the stone. A Christian does not walk upon tombs. But though capable of standing, he was not capable of walking. It might be said that something of dead Porthos had just died within him. His Bretons surrounded him: Aramis yielded to their kind exertions, and the three sailors, lifting him up, carried him into the canoe. Then, having laid him down upon the bench near the rudder, they took to their oars, preferring to get off by rowing to hoisting a sail, which might betray them.
Of all that leveled surface of the ancient grotto of Locmaria, of all that flattened shore, one single little hillock attracted their eyes. Aramis never removed his from it; and, at a distance out in the sea, in proportion as the shore receded, the menacing and proud mass of rock seemed to draw itself up, as formerly Porthos used to draw himself up, and raise a smiling and invincible head toward heaven, like that of the honest and valiant friend, the strongest of the four, and yet the first dead. Strange destiny of these men of brass! The most simple of heart allied to the most crafty; strength of body guided by subtlety of mind; and in the decisive moment, when vigor alone could save mind and body, a stone, a rock, a vile and material weight, triumphed over vigor, and falling upon the body, drove out the mind.
Worthy Porthos! born to help other men, always ready to sacrifice himself for the safety of the weak, as if God had only given him strength for that purpose: when dying he only thought he was carrying out the conditions of his compact with Aramis, a compact, however, which Aramis alone had drawn up, and which Porthos had only known to suffer by its terrible solidarity. Noble Porthos! of what good are the chateaux overflowing with sumptuous furniture, the forests overflowing with game, the lakes overflowing with fish, the cellars overflowing with wealth! Of what good are the lackeys in brilliant liveries, and in the midst of them Mousqueton, proud of the power delegated by thee! Oh! noble Porthos! careful heaper up of treasures, was it worth while to labor to sweeten and gild life, to come upon a desert shore, to the cries of sea birds, and lay thyself, with broken bones, beneath a cold stone! Was it worth while, in short, noble Porthos, to heap so much gold, and not have even the distich of a poor poet engraven upon thy monument! Valiant Porthos! He still, without doubt, sleeps, lost, forgotten, beneath the rock which the shepherds of the heath take for the gigantic abode of a dolmen. And so many twining branches, so many mosses, caressed by the bitter wind of the ocean, so many vivacious lichens have soldered the sepulcher to the earth, that the passenger will never imagine that such a block of granite can ever have been supported by the shoulders of one man.
Aramis, still pale, still icy, his heart upon his lips, Aramis looked, even till, with the last ray of daylight, the shore faded on the horizon. Not a word escaped his lips, not a sigh rose from his deep breast. The superstitious Bretons looked at him trembling. The silence was not of a man, it was of a statue. In the meantime, with the first gray lines that descended from the heavens, the canoe had hoisted its little sail, which swelling with the kisses of the breeze, and carrying them rapidly from the coast, made brave way with its head toward Spain, across the terrible gulf of Gascony, so rife with tempests. But scarcely half an hour after the sail had been hoisted, the rowers became inactive, reclining upon their benches, and making an eye-shade with their hands, pointed out to each other a white spot which appeared on the horizon, as motionless as is in appearance a gull rocked by the insensible respiration of the waves. But that which might have appeared motionless to the ordinary eyes was moving at a quick rate to the experienced eye of the sailor; that which appeared stationary on the ocean was cutting a rapid way through it. For some time, seeing the profound torpor in which their master was plunged, they did not dare to rouse him, and satisfied themselves with exchanging their conjectures in a low, disturbed voice. Aramis, in fact, so vigilant, so active—Aramis, whose eye, like that of a lynx, watched without ceasing, and saw better by night than by day—Aramis seemed to sleep in the despair of his soul. An hour passed thus, during which daylight gradually disappeared, but during which also the sail in view gained so swiftly on the bark that Goenne, one of the three sailors, ventured to say aloud:
"Monseigneur, we are being chased!"