oon continued for him. A mild and pale moon arose behind
the declivities of the coast, and streaking at first the undulating
ripples of the sea, which appeared to have calmed after the roarings it
had sent forth during the vision of Athos--the moon, say we, shed its
diamonds and opals upon the briars and bushes of the hills. The gray
rocks, like so many silent and attentive phantoms, appeared to raise
their verdant heads to examine likewise the field of battle by the light
of the moon, and Athos perceived that that field, entirely void during
the combat, was now strewed over with fallen bodies.

An inexpressible shudder of fear and horror seized his soul when he
recognized the white and blue uniform of the soldiers of Picardy, with
their long pikes and blue handles, and their muskets marked with the
fleur-de-lis on the butts. When he saw all the gaping, cold wounds,
looking up to the azure heavens as if to demand back of them the souls
to which they had opened a passage--when he saw the slaughtered horses,
stiff, with their tongues hanging out at one side of their mouths,
sleeping in the icy blood pooled around them, staining their furniture
and their manes--when he saw the white horse of M. de Beaufort, with his
head beaten to pieces, in the first ranks of the dead, Athos passed a
cold hand over his brow, which he was astonished not to find burning. He
was convinced by this touch that he was present, as a spectator, without
fever, at the day after a battle fought upon the shores of Gigelli by
the army of the expedition, which he had seen leave the coasts of France
and disappear in the horizon, and of which he had saluted with thought
and gesture the last cannon-shot fired by the duke as a signal of
farewell to his country.

Who can paint the mortal agony with which his soul followed, like a
vigilant eye, the trace of those dead bodies, and examined them, one
after the other, to see if Raoul slept among them? Who can express the
intoxication of joy with which Athos bowed before God, and thanked him
for not having seen him he sought with so much fear among the dead? In
fact, fallen dead in their ranks, stiff, icy, all these dead, easy to be
recognized, seemed to turn with complacency toward the Comte de la Fere,
to be the better seen by him during his funereal inspection. But yet, he
was astonished, while viewing all these bodies, not to perceive the
survivors. To such a point did the illusion extend, that this vision wa