Page:The Man in the Iron Mask.djvu/439

Oh, madame, I should better have liked to see you decked with flowers in the mansion of the Comte de la Fere. You would have wept less — they, too — I, too!"

"Monsieur!" she said, sobbing.

"For it is you," added this pitiless friend of the dead — "it is you who have laid these two men in the grave."

"0h, spare me!"

"God forbid, madame, that I should offend a woman, or that I should make her weep in vain; but I must say that the place of the murder is not upon the grave of her victims."

She wished to reply.

"What I now tell you," added he coldly, "I told the king."

She clasped her hands.

"I know,"' said she, "I have caused the death of the Vicomte de Bragelonne."

"Ah! you know it?"

"The news arrived at court yesterday. I have traveled during the night forty leagues to come and ask pardon of the comte, whom I supposed to be still living, and to supplicate God, upon the tomb of Raoul, that He would send me all the misfortunes I have merited, except a single one. Now, monsieur, I know that the death of the son has killed the father; I have two crimes to reproach myself with; I have two punishments to look for from God."

"I will repeat to you, mademoiselle," said D'Artagnan, "what Monsieur de Bragelonne said of you at Antibes, when he already meditated death: 'If pride and coquetry have misled her, I pardon her while despising her. If love has produced her error, I pardon her, swearing that no one could have loved her as I have done.'"

"You know," interrupted Louise, "that for my love I was about to sacrifice myself; you know whether I suffered when you met me lost, dying, abandoned. Well, never have I suffered so much as now; because then I hoped, I desired — now I have nothing to wish for; because this death drags away all my joy into the tomb; because I can no longer dare to love without remorse, and I feel that he whom I love — oh! that is the law — will repay me with the tortures I have made others undergo."

D'Artagnan made no reply; he was too well convinced she was not mistaken.

"Well, then," added she, "dear Monsieur d'Artagnan,

do not overwhelm me to-day, I again implore you. I am