He asked himself why the king had sent for
him back; why the Iron Mask had thrown the silver plate at the feet of
Raoul. As to the first subject, the reply was negative; he knew right
well that the king's calling him was from necessity. He still further
knew that Louis XIV. must experience an imperious desire for a private
conversation with one whom the possession of such a secret placed on a
level with the highest powers of the kingdom. But as to saying exactly
what the king's wish was, D'Artagnan found himself completely at a loss.
The musketeer had no doubts, either, upon the reason which had urged the
unfortunate Philippe to reveal his character and birth. Philippe, buried
forever beneath a mask of steel, exiled to a country where the men
seemed little more than slaves of the elements; Philippe, deprived
even of the society of D'Artagnan, who had loaded him with honors and
delicate attentions, had nothing more to see than odious specters in
this world, and, despair beginning to devour him, he poured himself
forth in complaints, in the belief that his revelations would raise up
some avenger for him. The manner in which the musketeer had been near
killing his two best friends, the destiny which had so strangely brought
Athos to participate in the great state secret, the farewell of Raoul,
the obscurity of the future which threatened to end in a melancholy
death; all this threw D'Artagnan incessantly back on lamentable
predictions and forebodings, which the rapidity of his pace did not
dissipate, as it used formerly to do. D'Artagnan passed from these
considerations to the remembrance of the proscribed Porthos and Aramis.
He saw them both, fugitives, tracked, ruined--laborious architects of
fortunes they had lost; and as the king called for his man of execution
in hours of vengeance and malice, D'Artagnan trembled at the very
idea of receiving some commission that would make his very soul bleed.
Sometimes, ascending hills, when the winded horse breathed hard from his
red nostrils, and heaved his flanks, the captain, left to more freedom
of thought, reflected on the prodigious genius of Aramis, a genius of
acumen and intrigue, a match to which the Fronde and the civil war had
produced but twice. Soldier, priest, diplomatist; gallant, avaricious,
cunning; Aramis had never taken the good things of this life except
as stepping-stones to rise to giddier ends. Generous in spirit, if not
lofty in heart, he never did ill but for