The Man in the Iron Mask. Александр Дюма

company. He comes in at the window, and traces in my room a square the shape of the window, which lights up the hangings of my bed and floods the very floor. This luminous square increases from ten o’clock till midday, and decreases from one till three slowly, as if, having hastened to my presence, it sorrowed at bidding me farewell. When its last ray disappears I have enjoyed its presence for five hours. Is not that sufficient? I have been told that there are unhappy beings who dig in quarries, and laborers who toil in mines, who never behold it at all.” Aramis wiped the drops from his brow. “As to the stars which are so delightful to view,” continued the young man, “they all resemble each other save in size and brilliancy. I am a favored mortal, for if you had not lighted that candle you would have been able to see the beautiful stars which I was gazing at from my couch before your arrival, whose silvery rays were stealing through my brain.”

      Aramis lowered his head; he felt himself overwhelmed with the bitter flow of that sinister philosophy which is the religion of the captive.

      “So much, then, for the flowers, the air, the daylight, and the stars,” tranquilly continued the young man; “there remains but exercise. Do I not walk all day in the governor’s garden if it is fine—here if it rains? in the fresh air if it is warm; in perfect warmth, thanks to my winter stove, if it be cold? Ah! monsieur, do you fancy,” continued the prisoner, not without bitterness, “that men have not done everything for me that a man can hope for or desire?”

      “Men!” said Aramis; “be it so; but it seems to me you are forgetting Heaven.”

      “Indeed I have forgotten Heaven,” murmured the prisoner, with emotion; “but why do you mention it? Of what use is it to talk to a prisoner of Heaven?”

      Aramis looked steadily at this singular youth, who possessed the resignation of a martyr with the smile of an atheist. “Is not Heaven in everything?” he murmured in a reproachful tone.

      “Say rather, at the end of everything,” answered the prisoner, firmly.

      “Be it so,” said Aramis; “but let us return to our starting-point.”

      “I ask nothing better,” returned the young man.

      “I am your confessor.”

      “Yes.”

      “Well, then, you ought, as a penitent, to tell me the truth.”

      “My whole desire is to tell it you.”

      “Every prisoner has committed some crime for which he has been imprisoned. What crime, then, have you committed?”

      “You asked me the same question the first time you saw me,” returned the prisoner.

      “And then, as now you evaded giving me an answer.”

      “And what reason have you for thinking that I shall now reply to you?”

      “Because this time I am your confessor.”

      “Then if you wish me to tell what crime I have committed, explain to me in what a crime consists. For as my conscience does not accuse me, I aver that I am not a criminal.”

      “We are often criminals in the sight of the great of the earth, not alone for having ourselves committed crimes, but because we know that crimes have been committed.”

      The prisoner manifested the deepest attention.

      “Yes, I understand you,” he said, after a pause; “yes, you are right, monsieur; it is very possible that, in such a light, I am a criminal in the eyes of the great of the earth.”

      “Ah! then you know something,” said Aramis, who thought he had pierced not merely through a defect in the harness, but through the joints of it.

      “No, I am not aware of anything,” replied the young man; “but sometimes I think—and I say to myself—”

      “What do you say to yourself?”

      “That if I were to think but a little more deeply I should either go mad or I should divine a great deal.”

      “And then—and then?” said Aramis, impatiently.

      “Then I leave off.”

      “You leave off?”

      “Yes; my head becomes confused and my ideas melancholy; I feel ennui overtaking me; I wish—”

      “What?”

      “I don’t know; but I do not like to give myself up to longing for things which I do not possess, when I am so happy with what I have.”

      “You are afraid of death?” said Aramis, with a slight uneasiness.

      “Yes,” said the young man, smiling.

      Aramis felt the chill of that smile, and shuddered. “Oh, as you fear death, you know more about matters than you say,” he cried.

      “And you,” returned the prisoner, “who bade me to ask to see you; you, who, when I did ask to see you, came here promising a world of confidence; how is it that, nevertheless, it is you who are silent, leaving it for me to speak? Since, then, we both wear masks, either let us both retain them or put them aside together.”

      Aramis felt the force and justice of the remark, saying to himself, “This is no ordinary man; I must be cautious.—Are you ambitious?” said he suddenly to the prisoner, aloud, without preparing him for the alteration.

      “What do you mean by ambitious?” replied the youth.

      “Ambition,” replied Aramis, “is the feeling which prompts a man to desire more—much more—than he possesses.”

      “I said that I was contented, monsieur; but, perhaps, I deceive myself. I am ignorant of the nature of ambition; but it is not impossible I may have some. Tell me your mind; that is all I ask.”

      “An ambitious man,” said Aramis, “is one who covets that which is beyond his station.”

      “I covet nothing beyond my station,” said the young man, with an assurance of manner which for the second time made the bishop of Vannes tremble.

      He was silent. But to look at the kindling eye, the knitted brow, and the reflective attitude of the captive, it was evident that he expected something more than silence,—a silence which Aramis now broke. “You lied the first time I saw you,” said he.

      “Lied!” cried the young man, starting up on his couch, with such a tone in his voice, and such a lightning in his eyes, that Aramis recoiled, in spite of himself.

      “I should say,” returned Aramis, bowing, “you concealed from me what you knew of your infancy.”

      “A man’s secrets are his own, monsieur,” retorted the prisoner, “and not at the mercy of the first chance-comer.”

      “True,” said Aramis, bowing still lower than before, “’tis true; pardon me, but to-day do I still occupy the place of a chance-comer? I beseech you to reply, monseigneur.”

      This title slightly disturbed the prisoner; but nevertheless he did not appear astonished that it was given him. “I do not know you, monsieur,” said he.

      “Oh, but if I dared, I would take your hand and kiss it!”

      The young man seemed as if he were going to give Aramis his hand; but the light which beamed in his eyes faded away, and he coldly and distrustfully withdrew his hand again. “Kiss the hand of a prisoner,” he said, shaking his head, “to what purpose?”

      “Why did you tell me,” said Aramis, “that you were happy here? Why, that you aspired to nothing? Why, in a word, by thus speaking, do you prevent me from being frank in my turn?”

      The same light shone a third time in the young man’s eyes, but died ineffectually away as before.

      “You distrust me,” said Aramis.

      “And why say you so, monsieur?”