Chapter 51

Chapter LI
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 Porthos, dead, 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 tiller, they took to their oars, preferring to get off by rowing rather than to hoist a sail, which might betray them.

Of all that levelled 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 do, and raise a smiling and invincible head towards 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 strength alone could save mind and body, a stone, a rock, a vile and material weight, triumphed over strength, 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 given him strength only for that purpose. In dying he thought he was only carrying out the conditions of his compact with Aramis,- a compact, however, which Aramis alone had drawn up, and which Porthos had known only to suffer by its terrible solidarity.

Noble Porthos! of what good are the châteaux filled with sumptuous furniture, the forests abounding in game, the lakes teeming with fish, the cellars gorged 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 lichens have soldered the sepulchre to the earth, that the passer-by 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,