Chapter 55

Chapter LV
Porthos’s Will
At Pierrefonds everything was in mourning. The courts were deserted, the stables closed, the parterres neglected. In the basins, the fountains, formerly so spreading, noisy, and sparkling, had stopped of themselves. Along the roads around the château came a few grave personages mounted upon mules or farm horses. These were country neighbors, cures, and bailiffs of adjacent estates. All these people entered the château silently, gave their horses to a melancholy-looking groom, and directed their steps, conducted by a huntsman in black, to the great dining-room, where Mousqueton received them at the door. Mousqueton had become so thin in two days that his clothes moved upon him like sheaths which are too large, in which the blades of swords dance about at each motion. His face, composed of red and white, like that of the Madonna of Vandyke, was furrowed by two silver rivulets which had dug their beds in his cheeks, as full formerly as they had become thin since his grief began. At each fresh arrival Mousqueton shed fresh tears, and it was pitiful to see him press his throat with his fat hand to keep from bursting into sobs and lamentations. All these visits were for the purpose of hearing the reading of Porthos’s will, announced for that day, and at which all the covetous and all who were allied by friendship with the deceased were anxious to be present, as he had left no relative behind him.

The visitors took their places as they arrived; and the great room had just been closed when the clock struck twelve, the hour fixed for the reading. Porthos’s procurator- who was naturally the successor of Master Coquenard- began by slowly unfolding the vast parchment upon which the powerful hand of Porthos had traced his last wishes. The seal broken, the spectacles put on, the preliminary cough having sounded, every one opened his ears. Mousqueton had squatted himself in a corner, the better to weep and the less to hear.

All at once the folding-doors of the great room, which had been shut, were thrown open as if by miracle, and a manly figure appeared upon the threshold, resplendent in the full light of the sun. This was d’Artagnan, who had come alone to the gate, and finding nobody to hold his stirrup, had tied his horse to a knocker and announced himself. The splendor of the daylight invading the room, the murmur of all present, and more than all that the instinct of the faithful dog drew Mousqueton from his revery; he raised his head, recognized the old friend of his master, and crying out with grief, embraced the captain’s knees, watering the floor with tears. D’Artagnan raised up the poor intendant, embraced him as if he had been a brother, and having nobly saluted the assembly, who all bowed as they whispered to one another his name, went and took his seat at the extremity of the great carved oak hall, still holding by the hand poor