_baton_, ornamented with its
_fleurs-de-lis_, he cast on it his eyes, which had no longer the power
of looking upwards towards Heaven, and fell back, murmuring strange
words, which appeared to the soldiers cabalistic--words which had
formerly represented so many things on earth, and which none but the
dying man any longer comprehended:

"Athos--Porthos, farewell till we meet again! Aramis, adieu forever!"

Of the four valiant men whose history we have related, there now
remained but one. Heaven had taken to itself three noble souls. [14]

End of The Man in the Iron Mask. This is the last text in the series.

Footnotes

[Footnote 1: "He is patient because he is eternal." is how the Latin translates.
It is from St. Augustine. This motto was sometimes applied to the
Papacy, but not to the Jesuits.]

[Footnote 2: In the five-volume edition, Volume 4 ends here.]

[Footnote 3: It is possible that the preceding conversation is an obscure
allegorical allusion to the Fronde, or perhaps an intimation that the
Duc was the father of Mordaunt, from Twenty Years After, but a definite
interpretation still eludes modern scholars.]

[Footnote 4: The dictates of such a service would require Raoul to spend the
rest of his life outside of France, hence Athos's and Grimaud's extreme
reactions.]

[Footnote 5: Dumas here, and later in the chapter, uses the name Roncherat.
Roncherolles is the actual name of the man.]

[Footnote 6: In some editions, "in spite of Milady" reads "in spite of malady".]

[Footnote 7: "Pie" in this case refers to magpies, the prey for the falcons.]

[Footnote 8: Anne of Austria did not die until 1666, and Dumas sets the current
year as 1665.]

[Footnote 9: Madame de Montespan would oust Louise from the king's affections by
1667.]

[Footnote 10: De Guiche would not return to court until 1671.]

[Footnote 11: Madame did die of poison in 1670, shortly after returning from the
mission described later. The Chevalier de Lorraine had actually been
ordered out of France in 1662.]

[Footnote 12: This particular campaign did not actually occur until 1673.]

[Footnote 13: Jean-Paul Oliva was the actual general of the Jesuits from
1664-1681.]

[Footnote 14: In earlier editions, the last line reads, "Of the four valiant men
whose history we have related, there now no longer remained but one
single body; God had resumed the souls." Dumas made the revision in
later editions.]

End of Project Gu