the
candles burning, awaited the first dawn of the day; and when Fouquet
happened to sigh too loudly, D'Artagnan only snored the louder. Not
a single visit, not even from Aramis, disturbed their quietude: not a
sound even was heard throughout the whole vast palace. Outside, however,
the guards of honor on duty, and the patrol of musketeers, paced up and
down; and the sound of their feet could be heard on the gravel walks.
It seemed to act as an additional soporific for the sleepers, while the
murmuring of the wind through the trees, and the unceasing music of
the fountains whose waters tumbled in the basin, still went on
uninterruptedly, without being disturbed at the slight noises and items
of little moment that constitute the life and death of human nature.

Chapter XX. The Morning.

In vivid contrast to the sad and terrible destiny of the king imprisoned
in the Bastile, and tearing, in sheer despair, the bolts and bars of
his dungeon, the rhetoric of the chroniclers of old would not fail to
present, as a complete antithesis, the picture of Philippe lying asleep
beneath the royal canopy. We do not pretend to say that such rhetoric is
always bad, and always scatters, in places where they have no right to
grow, the flowers with which it embellishes and enlivens history. But we
shall, on the present occasion, carefully avoid polishing the antithesis
in question, but shall proceed to draw another picture as minutely as
possible, to serve as foil and counterfoil to the one in the preceding
chapter. The young prince alighted from Aramis's room, in the same way
the king had descended from the apartment dedicated to Morpheus.
The dome gradually and slowly sank down under Aramis's pressure, and
Philippe stood beside the royal bed, which had ascended again after
having deposited its prisoner in the secret depths of the subterranean
passage. Alone, in the presence of all the luxury which surrounded him;
alone, in the presence of his power; alone, with the part he was about
to be forced to act, Philippe for the first time felt his heart, and
mind, and soul expand beneath the influence of a thousand mutable
emotions, which are the vital throbs of a king's heart. He could not
help changing color when he looked upon the empty bed, still tumbled
by his brother's body. This mute accomplice had returned, after having
completed the work it had been destined to perform; it returned with the
traces of the crime; it spoke to the guilt