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CHAPTER XII. The Wine of Melun.
The king had, in point of fact, entered Melun with the intention of merely passing
through the city.
The youthful monarch was most eagerly anxious for amusements; only twice during
the journey had he been able to catch a glimpse of La Valliere, and, suspecting
that his only opportunity of speaking to
her would be after nightfall, in the gardens, and after the ceremonial of
reception had been gone through, he had been very desirous to arrive at Vaux as
early as possible.
But he reckoned without his captain of the musketeers, and without M. Colbert.
Like Calypso, who could not be consoled at the departure of Ulysses, our Gascon could
not console himself for not having guessed why Aramis had asked Percerin to show him
the king's new costumes.
"There is not a doubt," he said to himself, "that my friend the bishop of Vannes had
some motive in that;" and then he began to rack his brains most uselessly.
D'Artagnan, so intimately acquainted with all the court intrigues, who knew the
position of Fouquet better than even Fouquet himself did, had conceived the
strangest fancies and suspicions at the
announcement of the fete, which would have ruined a wealthy man, and which became
impossible, utter madness even, for a man so poor as he was.
And then, the presence of Aramis, who had returned from Belle-Isle, and been
nominated by Monsieur Fouquet inspector- general of all the arrangements; his
perseverance in mixing himself up with all
the surintendant's affairs; his visits to Baisemeaux; all this suspicious singularity
of conduct had excessively troubled and tormented D'Artagnan during the last two
weeks.
"With men of Aramis's stamp," he said, "one is never the stronger except sword in hand.
So long as Aramis continued a soldier, there was hope of getting the better of
him; but since he has covered his cuirass with a stole, we are lost.
But what can Aramis's object possibly be?"
And D'Artagnan plunged again into deep thought.
"What does it matter to me, after all," he continued, "if his only object is to
overthrow M. Colbert?
And what else can he be after?" And D'Artagnan rubbed his forehead--that
fertile land, whence the plowshare of his nails had turned up so many and such
admirable ideas in his time.
He, at first, thought of talking the matter over with Colbert, but his friendship for
Aramis, the oath of earlier days, bound him too strictly.
He revolted at the bare idea of such a thing, and, besides, he hated the financier
too cordially.
Then, again, he wished to unburden his mind to the king; but yet the king would not be
able to understand the suspicions which had not even a shadow of reality at their base.
He resolved to address himself to Aramis, direct, the first time he met him.
"I will get him," said the musketeer, "between a couple of candles, suddenly, and
when he least expects it, I will place my hand upon his heart, and he will tell me--
What will he tell me?
Yes, he will tell me something, for mordioux! there is something in it, I
know."
Somewhat calmer, D'Artagnan made every preparation for the journey, and took the
greatest care that the military household of the king, as yet very inconsiderable in
numbers, should be well officered and well
disciplined in its meager and limited proportions.
The result was that, through the captain's arrangements, the king, on arriving at
Melun, saw himself at the head of both the musketeers and Swiss guards, as well as a
picket of the French guards.
It might almost have been called a small army.
M. Colbert looked at the troops with great delight: he even wished they had been a
third more in number.
"But why?" said the king. "In order to show greater honor to M.
Fouquet," replied Colbert. "In order to ruin him the sooner," thought
D'Artagnan.
When this little army appeared before Melun, the chief magistrates came out to
meet the king, and to present him with the keys of the city, and invited him to enter
the Hotel de Ville, in order to partake of the wine of honor.
The king, who expected to pass through the city and to proceed to Vaux without delay,
became quite red in the face from vexation.
"Who was fool enough to occasion this delay?" muttered the king, between his
teeth, as the chief magistrate was in the middle of a long address.
"Not I, certainly," replied D'Artagnan, "but I believe it was M. Colbert."
Colbert, having heard his name pronounced, said, "What was M. d'Artagnan good enough
to say?"
"I was good enough to remark that it was you who stopped the king's progress, so
that he might taste the vin de Brie. Was I right?"
"Quite so, monsieur."
"In that case, then, it was you whom the king called some name or other."
"What name?" "I hardly know; but wait a moment--idiot, I
think it was--no, no, it was fool or dolt.
Yes; his majesty said that the man who had thought of the vin de Melun was something
of the sort."
D'Artagnan, after this broadside, quietly caressed his mustache; M. Colbert's large
head seemed to become larger and larger than ever.
D'Artagnan, seeing how ugly anger made him, did not stop half-way.
The orator still went on with his speech, while the king's color was visibly
increasing.
"Mordioux!" said the musketeer, coolly, "the king is going to have an attack of
determination of blood to the head. Where the deuce did you get hold of that
idea, Monsieur Colbert?
You have no luck." "Monsieur," said the financier, drawing
himself up, "my zeal for the king's service inspired me with the idea."
"Bah!"
"Monsieur, Melun is a city, an excellent city, which pays well, and which it would
be imprudent to displease." "There, now!
I, who do not pretend to be a financier, saw only one idea in your idea."
"What was that, monsieur?"
"That of causing a little annoyance to M. Fouquet, who is making himself quite giddy
on his donjons yonder, in waiting for us." This was a home-stroke, hard enough in all
conscience.
Colbert was completely thrown out of the saddle by it, and retired, thoroughly
discomfited.
Fortunately, the speech was now at an end; the king drank the wine which was presented
to him, and then every one resumed the progress through the city.
The king bit his lips in anger, for the evening was closing in, and all hope of a
walk with La Valliere was at an end.
In order that the whole of the king's household should enter Vaux, four hours at
least were necessary, owing to the different arrangements.
The king, therefore, who was boiling with impatience, hurried forward as much as
possible, in order to reach it before nightfall.
But, at the moment he was setting off again, other and fresh difficulties arose.
"Is not the king going to sleep at Melun?" said Colbert, in a low tone of voice, to
D'Artagnan.
M. Colbert must have been badly inspired that day, to address himself in that manner
to the chief of the musketeers; for the latter guessed that the king's intention
was very far from that of remaining where he was.
D'Artagnan would not allow him to enter Vaux except he were well and strongly
accompanied; and desired that his majesty would not enter except with all the escort.
On the other hand, he felt that these delays would irritate that impatient
monarch beyond measure. In what way could he possibly reconcile
these difficulties?
D'Artagnan took up Colbert's remark, and determined to repeated it to the king.
"Sire," he said, "M. Colbert has been asking me if your majesty does not intend
to sleep at Melun."
"Sleep at Melun! What for?" exclaimed Louis XIV.
"Sleep at Melun!
Who, in Heaven's name, can have thought of such a thing, when M. Fouquet is expecting
us this evening?"
"It was simply," replied Colbert, quickly, "the fear of causing your majesty the least
delay; for, according to established etiquette, you cannot enter any place, with
the exception of your own royal residences,
until the soldiers' quarters have been marked out by the quartermaster, and the
garrison properly distributed."
D'Artagnan listened with the greatest attention, biting his mustache to conceal
his vexation; and the queens were not less interested.
They were fatigued, and would have preferred to go to rest without proceeding
any farther; more especially, in order to prevent the king walking about in the
evening with M. de Saint-Aignan and the
ladies of the court, for, if etiquette required the princesses to remain within
their own rooms, the ladies of honor, as soon as they had performed the services
required of them, had no restrictions
placed upon them, but were at liberty to walk about as they pleased.
It will easily be conjectured that all these rival interests, gathering together
in vapors, necessarily produced clouds, and that the clouds were likely to be followed
by a tempest.
The king had no mustache to gnaw, and therefore kept biting the handle of his
whip instead, with ill-concealed impatience.
How could he get out of it?
D'Artagnan looked as agreeable as possible, and Colbert as sulky as he could.
Who was there he could get in a passion with?
"We will consult the queen," said Louis XIV., bowing to the royal ladies.
And this kindness of consideration softened Maria Theresa's heart, who, being of a kind
and generous disposition, when left to her own free-will, replied:
"I shall be delighted to do whatever your majesty wishes."
"How long will it take us to get to Vaux?" inquired Anne of Austria, in slow and
measured accents, placing her hand upon her ***, where the seat of her pain lay.
"An hour for your majesty's carriages," said D'Artagnan; "the roads are tolerably
good." The king looked at him.
"And a quarter of an hour for the king," he hastened to add.
"We should arrive by daylight?" said Louis XIV.
"But the billeting of the king's military escort," objected Colbert, softly, "will
make his majesty lose all the advantage of his speed, however quick he may be."
"Double *** that you are!" thought D'Artagnan; "if I had any interest or
motive in demolishing your credit with the king, I could do it in ten minutes.
If I were in the king's place," he added aloud, "I should, in going to M. Fouquet,
leave my escort behind me; I should go to him as a friend; I should enter accompanied
only by my captain of the guards; I should
consider that I was acting more nobly, and should be invested with a still more sacred
character by doing so." Delight sparkled in the king's eyes.
"That is indeed a very sensible suggestion.
We will go to see a friend as friends; the gentlemen who are with the carriages can go
slowly: but we who are mounted will ride on."
And he rode off, accompanied by all those who were mounted.
Colbert hid his ugly head behind his horse's neck.
"I shall be quits," said D'Artagnan, as he galloped along, "by getting a little talk
with Aramis this evening. And then, M. Fouquet is a man of honor.
Mordioux!
I have said so, and it must be so."
And this was the way how, towards seven o'clock in the evening, without announcing
his arrival by the din of trumpets, and without even his advanced guard, without
out-riders or musketeers, the king
presented himself before the gate of Vaux, where Fouquet, who had been informed of his
royal guest's approach, had been waiting for the last half-hour, with his head
uncovered, surrounded by his household and his friends.
>
CHAPTER XIII. Nectar and Ambrosia.
M. Fouquet held the stirrup of the king, who, having dismounted, bowed most
graciously, and more graciously still held out his hand to him, which Fouquet, in
spite of a slight resistance on the king's part, carried respectfully to his lips.
The king wished to wait in the first courtyard for the arrival of the carriages,
nor had he long to wait, for the roads had been put into excellent order by the
superintendent, and a stone would hardly
have been found of the size of an egg the whole way from Melun to Vaux; so that the
carriages, rolling along as though on a carpet, brought the ladies to Vaux, without
jolting or fatigue, by eight o'clock.
They were received by Madame Fouquet, and at the moment they made their appearance, a
light as bright as day burst forth from every quarter, trees, vases, and marble
statues.
This species of enchantment lasted until their majesties had retired into the
palace.
All these wonders and magical effects which the chronicler has heaped up, or rather
embalmed, in his recital, at the risk of rivaling the brain-born scenes of
romancers; these splendors whereby night
seemed vanquished and nature corrected, together with every delight and luxury
combined for the satisfaction of all the senses, as well as the imagination, Fouquet
did in real truth offer to his sovereign in
that enchanting retreat of which no monarch could at that time boast of possessing an
equal.
We do not intend to describe the grand banquet, at which the royal guests were
present, nor the concerts, nor the fairy- like and more than magic transformations
and metamorphoses; it will be enough for
our purpose to depict the countenance the king assumed, which, from being gay, soon
wore a very gloomy, constrained, and irritated expression.
He remembered his own residence, royal though it was, and the mean and indifferent
style of luxury that prevailed there, which comprised but little more than what was
merely useful for the royal wants, without being his own personal property.
The large vases of the Louvre, the older furniture and plate of Henry II., of
Francis I., and of Louis XI., were but historic monuments of earlier days; nothing
but specimens of art, the relics of his
predecessors; while with Fouquet, the value of the article was as much in the
workmanship as in the article itself.
Fouquet ate from a gold service, which artists in his own employ had modeled and
cast for him alone.
Fouquet drank wines of which the king of France did not even know the name, and
drank them out of goblets each more valuable than the entire royal cellar.
What, too, was to be said of the apartments, the hangings, the pictures, the
servants and officers, of every description, of his household?
What of the mode of service in which etiquette was replaced by order; stiff
formality by personal, unrestrained comfort; the happiness and contentment of
the guest became the supreme law of all who obeyed the host?
The perfect swarm of busily engaged persons moving about noiselessly; the multitude of
guests,--who were, however, even less numerous than the servants who waited on
them,--the myriad of exquisitely prepared
dishes, of gold and silver vases; the floods of dazzling light, the masses of
unknown flowers of which the hot-houses had been despoiled, redundant with luxuriance
of unequaled scent and beauty; the perfect
harmony of the surroundings, which, indeed, was no more than the prelude of the
promised fete, charmed all who were there; and they testified their admiration over
and over again, not by voice or gesture,
but by deep silence and rapt attention, those two languages of the courtier which
acknowledge the hand of no master powerful enough to restrain them.
As for the king, his eyes filled with tears; he dared not look at the queen.
Anne of Austria, whose pride was superior to that of any creature breathing,
overwhelmed her host by the contempt with which she treated everything handed to her.
The young queen, kind-hearted by nature and curious by disposition, praised Fouquet,
ate with an exceedingly good appetite, and asked the names of the strange fruits as
they were placed upon the table.
Fouquet replied that he was not aware of their names.
The fruits came from his own stores; he had often cultivated them himself, having an
intimate acquaintance with the cultivation of exotic fruits and plants.
The king felt and appreciated the delicacy of the replies, but was only the more
humiliated; he thought the queen a little too familiar in her manners, and that Anne
of Austria resembled Juno a little too
much, in being too proud and haughty; his chief anxiety, however, was himself, that
he might remain cold and distant in his behavior, bordering lightly the limits of
supreme disdain or simple admiration.
But Fouquet had foreseen all this; he was, in fact, one of those men who foresee
everything.
The king had expressly declared that, so long as he remained under Fouquet's roof,
he did not wish his own different repasts to be served in accordance with the usual
etiquette, and that he would, consequently,
dine with the rest of society; but by the thoughtful attention of the surintendant,
the king's dinner was served up separately, if one may so express it, in the middle of
the general table; the dinner, wonderful in
every respect, from the dishes of which was composed, comprised everything the king
liked and generally preferred to anything else.
Louis had no excuse--he, indeed, who had the keenest appetite in his kingdom--for
saying that he was not hungry.
Nay, M. Fouquet did even better still; he certainly, in obedience to the king's
expressed desire, seated himself at the table, but as soon as the soups were
served, he arose and personally waited on
the king, while Madame Fouquet stood behind the queen-mother's armchair.
The disdain of Juno and the sulky fits of temper of Jupiter could not resist this
excess of kindly feeling and polite attention.
The queen ate a biscuit dipped in a glass of San-Lucar wine; and the king ate of
everything, saying to M. Fouquet: "It is impossible, monsieur le surintendant, to
dine better anywhere."
Whereupon the whole court began, on all sides, to devour the dishes spread before
them with such enthusiasm that it looked as though a cloud of Egyptian locusts was
settling down on green and growing crops.
As soon, however, as his hunger was appeased, the king became morose and
overgloomed again; the more so in proportion to the satisfaction he fancied
he had previously manifested, and
particularly on account of the deferential manner which his courtiers had shown
towards Fouquet.
D'Artagnan, who ate a good deal and drank but little, without allowing it to be
noticed, did not lose a single opportunity, but made a great number of observations
which he turned to good profit.
When the supper was finished, the king expressed a wish not to lose the promenade.
The park was illuminated; the moon, too, as if she had placed herself at the orders of
the lord of Vaux, silvered the trees and lake with her own bright and quasi-
phosphorescent light.
The air was strangely soft and balmy; the daintily shell-gravelled walks through the
thickly set avenues yielded luxuriously to the feet.
The fete was complete in every respect, for the king, having met La Valliere in one of
the winding paths of the wood, was able to press her hand and say, "I love you,"
without any one overhearing him except M.
d'Artagnan, who followed, and M. Fouquet, who preceded him.
The dreamy night of magical enchantments stole smoothly on.
The king having requested to be shown to his room, there was immediately a movement
in every direction.
The queens passed to their own apartments, accompanied by them music of theorbos and
lutes; the king found his musketeers awaiting him on the grand flight of steps,
for M. Fouquet had brought them on from Melun and had invited them to supper.
D'Artagnan's suspicions at once disappeared.
He was weary, he had supped well, and wished, for once in his life, thoroughly to
enjoy a fete given by a man who was in every sense of the word a king.
"M. Fouquet," he said, "is the man for me."
The king was conducted with the greatest ceremony to the chamber of Morpheus, of
which we owe some cursory description to our readers.
It was the handsomest and largest in the palace.
Lebrun had painted on the vaulted ceiling the happy as well as the unhappy dreams
which Morpheus inflicts on kings as well as on other men.
Everything that sleep gives birth to that is lovely, its fairy scenes, its flowers
and nectar, the wild voluptuousness or profound repose of the senses, had the
painter elaborated on his frescoes.
It was a composition as soft and pleasing in one part as dark and gloomy and terrible
in another.
The poisoned chalice, the glittering dagger suspended over the head of the sleeper;
wizards and phantoms with terrific masks, those half-dim shadows more alarming than
the approach of fire or the somber face of
midnight, these, and such as these, he had made the companions of his more pleasing
pictures.
No sooner had the king entered his room than a cold shiver seemed to pass through
him, and on Fouquet asking him the cause of it, the king replied, as pale as death:
"I am sleepy, that is all."
"Does your majesty wish for your attendants at once?"
"No; I have to talk with a few persons first," said the king.
"Will you have the goodness to tell M. Colbert I wish to see him."
Fouquet bowed and left the room.
>
CHAPTER XIV. A Gascon, and a Gascon and a Half.
D'Artagnan had determined to lose no time, and in fact he never was in the habit of
doing so.
After having inquired for Aramis, he had looked for him in every direction until he
had succeeded in finding him.
Besides, no sooner had the king entered Vaux, than Aramis had retired to his own
room, meditating, doubtless, some new piece of gallant attention for his majesty's
amusement.
D'Artagnan desired the servants to announce him, and found on the second story (in a
beautiful room called the Blue Chamber, on account of the color of its hangings) the
bishop of Vannes in company with Porthos and several of the modern Epicureans.
Aramis came forward to embrace his friend, and offered him the best seat.
As it was after awhile generally remarked among those present that the musketeer was
reserved, and wished for an opportunity for conversing secretly with Aramis, the
Epicureans took their leave.
Porthos, however, did not stir; for true it is that, having dined exceedingly well, he
was fast asleep in his armchair; and the freedom of conversation therefore was not
interrupted by a third person.
Porthos had a deep, harmonious snore, and people might talk in the midst of its loud
bass without fear of disturbing him. D'Artagnan felt that he was called upon to
open the conversation.
"Well, and so we have come to Vaux," he said.
"Why, yes, D'Artagnan. And how do you like the place?"
"Very much, and I like M. Fouquet, also."
"Is he not a charming host?" "No one could be more so."
"I am told that the king began by showing great distance of manner towards M.
Fouquet, but that his majesty grew much more cordial afterwards."
"You did not notice it, then, since you say you have been told so?"
"No; I was engaged with the gentlemen who have just left the room about the
theatrical performances and the tournaments which are to take place to-morrow."
"Ah, indeed! you are the comptroller- general of the fetes here, then?"
"You know I am a friend of all kinds of amusement where the exercise of the
imagination is called into activity; I have always been a poet in one way or another."
"Yes, I remember the verses you used to write, they were charming."
"I have forgotten them, but I am delighted to read the verses of others, when those
others are known by the names of Moliere, Pelisson, La Fontaine, etc."
"Do you know what idea occurred to me this evening, Aramis?"
"No; tell me what it was, for I should never be able to guess it, you have so
many."
"Well, the idea occurred to me, that the true king of France is not Louis XIV."
"What!" said Aramis, involuntarily, looking the musketeer full in the eyes.
"No, it is Monsieur Fouquet."
Aramis breathed again, and smiled. "Ah! you are like all the rest, jealous,"
he said. "I would wager that it was M. Colbert who
turned that pretty phrase."
D'Artagnan, in order to throw Aramis off his guard, related Colbert's misadventures
with regard to the vin de Melun. "He comes of a mean race, does Colbert,"
said Aramis.
"Quite true."
"When I think, too," added the bishop, "that that fellow will be your minister
within four months, and that you will serve him as blindly as you did Richelieu or
Mazarin--"
"And as you serve M. Fouquet," said D'Artagnan.
"With this difference, though, that M. Fouquet is not M. Colbert."
"True, true," said D'Artagnan, as he pretended to become sad and full of
reflection; and then, a moment after, he added, "Why do you tell me that M. Colbert
will be minister in four months?"
"Because M. Fouquet will have ceased to be so," replied Aramis.
"He will be ruined, you mean?" said D'Artagnan.
"Completely so."
"Why does he give these fetes, then?" said the musketeer, in a tone so full of
thoughtful consideration, and so well assumed, that the bishop was for the moment
deceived by it.
"Why did you not dissuade him from it?" The latter part of the phrase was just a
little too much, and Aramis's former suspicions were again aroused.
"It is done with the object of humoring the king."
"By ruining himself?" "Yes, by ruining himself for the king."
"A most eccentric, one might say, sinister calculation, that."
"Necessity, necessity, my friend." "I don't see that, dear Aramis."
"Do you not?
Have you not remarked M. Colbert's daily increasing antagonism, and that he is doing
his utmost to drive the king to get rid of the superintendent?"
"One must be blind not to see it."
"And that a cabal is already armed against M. Fouquet?"
"That is well known."
"What likelihood is there that the king would join a party formed against a man who
will have spent everything he had to please him?"
"True, true," said D'Artagnan, slowly, hardly convinced, yet curious to broach
another phase of the conversation.
"There are follies, and follies," he resumed, "and I do not like those you are
committing." "What do you allude to?"
"As for the banquet, the ball, the concert, the theatricals, the tournaments, the
cascades, the fireworks, the illuminations, and the presents--these are well and good,
I grant; but why were not these expenses sufficient?
Why was it necessary to have new liveries and costumes for your whole household?"
"You are quite right.
I told M. Fouquet that myself; he replied, that if he were rich enough he would offer
the king a newly erected chateau, from the vanes at the houses to the very sub-
cellars; completely new inside and out; and
that, as soon as the king had left, he would burn the whole building and its
contents, in order that it might not be made use of by any one else."
"How completely Spanish!"
"I told him so, and he then added this: 'Whoever advises me to spare expense, I
shall look upon as my enemy.'" "It is positive madness; and that portrait,
too!"
"What portrait?" said Aramis. "That of the king, and the surprise as
well." "What surprise?"
"The surprise you seem to have in view, and on account of which you took some specimens
away, when I met you at Percerin's." D'Artagnan paused.
The shaft was discharged, and all he had to do was to wait and watch its effect.
"That is merely an act of graceful attention," replied Aramis.
D'Artagnan went up to his friend, took hold of both his hands, and looking him full in
the eyes, said, "Aramis, do you still care for me a very little?"
"What a question to ask!"
"Very good. One favor, then.
Why did you take some patterns of the king's costumes at Percerin's?"
"Come with me and ask poor Lebrun, who has been working upon them for the last two
days and nights." "Aramis, that may be truth for everybody
else, but for me--"
"Upon my word, D'Artagnan, you astonish me."
"Be a little considerate.
Tell me the exact truth; you would not like anything disagreeable to happen to me,
would you?" "My dear friend, you are becoming quite
incomprehensible.
What suspicion can you have possibly got hold of?"
"Do you believe in my instinctive feelings? Formerly you used to have faith in them.
Well, then, an instinct tells me that you have some concealed project on foot."
"I--a project?" "I am convinced of it."
"What nonsense!"
"I am not only sure of it, but I would even swear it."
"Indeed, D'Artagnan, you cause me the greatest pain.
Is it likely, if I have any project in hand that I ought to keep secret from you, I
should tell you about it?
If I had one that I could and ought to have revealed, should I not have long ago
divulged it?" "No, Aramis, no.
There are certain projects which are never revealed until the favorable opportunity
arrives."
"In that case, my dear fellow," returned the bishop, laughing, "the only thing now
is, that the 'opportunity' has not yet arrived."
D'Artagnan shook his head with a sorrowful expression.
"Oh, friendship, friendship!" he said, "what an idle word you are!
Here is a man who, if I were but to ask it, would suffer himself to be cut in pieces
for my sake." "You are right," said Aramis, nobly.
"And this man, who would shed every drop of blood in his veins for me, will not open up
before me the least corner in his heart.
Friendship, I repeat, is nothing but an unsubstantial shadow--a lure, like
everything else in this bright, dazzling world."
"It is not thus you should speak of our friendship," replied the bishop, in a firm,
assured voice; "for ours is not of the same nature as those of which you have been
speaking."
"Look at us, Aramis; three out of the old 'four.'
You are deceiving me; I suspect you; and Porthos is fast asleep.
An admirable trio of friends, don't you think so?
What an affecting relic of the former dear old times!"
"I can only tell you one thing, D'Artagnan, and I swear it on the Bible: I love you
just as I used to do. If I ever suspect you, it is on account of
others, and not on account of either of us.
In everything I may do, and should happen to succeed in, you will find your fourth.
Will you promise me the same favor?"
"If I am not mistaken, Aramis, your words-- at the moment you pronounce them--are full
of generous feeling." "Such a thing is very possible."
"You are conspiring against M. Colbert.
If that be all, mordioux, tell me so at once.
I have the instrument in my own hand, and will pull out the tooth easily enough."
Aramis could not conceal a smile of disdain that flitted over his haughty features.
"And supposing that I were conspiring against Colbert, what harm would there be
in that?"
"No, no; that would be too trifling a matter for you to take in hand, and it was
not on that account you asked Percerin for those patterns of the king's costumes.
Oh! Aramis, we are not enemies, remember-- we are brothers.
Tell me what you wish to undertake, and, upon the word of a D'Artagnan, if I cannot
help you, I will swear to remain neuter."
"I am undertaking nothing," said Aramis. "Aramis, a voice within me speaks and seems
to trickle forth a rill of light within my darkness: it is a voice that has never yet
deceived me.
It is the king you are conspiring against." "The king?" exclaimed the bishop,
pretending to be annoyed. "Your face will not convince me; the king,
I repeat."
"Will you help me?" said Aramis, smiling ironically.
"Aramis, I will do more than help you--I will do more than remain neuter--I will
save you."
"You are mad, D'Artagnan." "I am the wiser of the two, in this
matter." "You to suspect me of wishing to
assassinate the king!"
"Who spoke of such a thing?" smiled the musketeer.
"Well, let us understand one another.
I do not see what any one can do to a legitimate king as ours is, if he does not
assassinate him." D'Artagnan did not say a word.
"Besides, you have your guards and your musketeers here," said the bishop.
"True." "You are not in M. Fouquet's house, but in
your own."
"True; but in spite of that, Aramis, grant me, for pity's sake, one single word of a
true friend." "A true friend's word is ever truth itself.
If I think of touching, even with my finger, the son of Anne of Austria, the
true king of this realm of France--if I have not the firm intention of prostrating
myself before his throne--if in every idea
I may entertain to-morrow, here at Vaux, will not be the most glorious day my king
ever enjoyed--may Heaven's lightning blast me where I stand!"
Aramis had pronounced these words with his face turned towards the alcove of his own
bedroom, where D'Artagnan, seated with his back towards the alcove, could not suspect
that any one was lying concealed.
The earnestness of his words, the studied slowness with which he pronounced them, the
solemnity of his oath, gave the musketeer the most complete satisfaction.
He took hold of both Aramis's hands, and shook them cordially.
Aramis had endured reproaches without turning pale, and had blushed as he
listened to words of praise.
D'Artagnan, deceived, did him honor; but D'Artagnan, trustful and reliant, made him
feel ashamed.
"Are you going away?" he said, as he embraced him, in order to conceal the flush
on his face. "Yes. Duty summons me.
I have to get the watch-word.
It seems I am to be lodged in the king's ante-room.
Where does Porthos sleep?"
"Take him away with you, if you like, for he rumbles through his sleepy nose like a
park of artillery." "Ah! he does not stay with you, then?" said
D'Artagnan.
"Not the least in the world. He has a chamber to himself, but I don't
know where."
"Very good!" said the musketeer; from whom this separation of the two associates
removed his last suspicion, and he touched Porthos lightly on the shoulder; the latter
replied by a loud yawn.
"Come," said D'Artagnan. "What, D'Artagnan, my dear fellow, is that
you? What a lucky chance!
Oh, yes--true; I have forgotten; I am at the fete at Vaux."
"Yes; and your beautiful dress, too." "Yes, it was very attentive on the part of
Monsieur Coquelin de Voliere, was it not?"
"Hush!" said Aramis. "You are walking so heavily you will make
the flooring give way." "True," said the musketeer; "this room is
above the dome, I think."
"And I did not choose it for a fencing- room, I assure you," added the bishop.
"The ceiling of the king's room has all the lightness and calm of wholesome sleep.
Do not forget, therefore, that my flooring is merely the covering of his ceiling.
Good night, my friends, and in ten minutes I shall be asleep myself."
And Aramis accompanied them to the door, laughing quietly all the while.
As soon as they were outside, he bolted the door, hurriedly; closed up the chinks of
the windows, and then called out, "Monseigneur!--monseigneur!"
Philippe made his appearance from the alcove, as he pushed aside a sliding panel
placed behind the bed. "M. d'Artagnan entertains a great many
suspicions, it seems," he said.
"Ah!--you recognized M. d'Artagnan, then?" "Before you called him by his name, even."
"He is your captain of musketeers."
"He is very devoted to me," replied Philippe, laying a stress upon the personal
pronoun. "As faithful as a dog; but he bites
sometimes.
If D'Artagnan does not recognize you before the other has disappeared, rely upon
D'Artagnan to the end of the world; for in that case, if he has seen nothing, he will
keep his fidelity.
If he sees, when it is too late, he is a Gascon, and will never admit that he has
been deceived." "I thought so.
What are we to do, now?"
"Sit in this folding-chair.
I am going to push aside a portion of the flooring; you will look through the
opening, which answers to one of the false windows made in the dome of the king's
apartment.
Can you see?" "Yes," said Philippe, starting as at the
sight of an enemy; "I see the king!" "What is he doing?"
"He seems to wish some man to sit down close to him."
"M. Fouquet?" "No, no; wait a moment--"
"Look at the notes and the portraits, my prince."
"The man whom the king wishes to sit down in his presence is M. Colbert."
"Colbert sit down in the king's presence!" exclaimed Aramis.
"It is impossible." "Look."
Aramis looked through the opening in the flooring.
"Yes," he said. "Colbert himself.
Oh, monseigneur! what can we be going to hear--and what can result from this
intimacy?" "Nothing good for M. Fouquet, at all
events."
The prince did not deceive himself. We have seen that Louis XIV. had sent for
Colbert, and Colbert had arrived.
The conversation began between them by the king according to him one of the highest
favors that he had ever done; it was true the king was alone with his subject.
"Colbert," said he, "sit down."
The intendant, overcome with delight, for he feared he was about to be dismissed,
refused this unprecedented honor. "Does he accept?" said Aramis.
"No, he remains standing."
"Let us listen, then." And the future king and the future pope
listened eagerly to the simple mortals they held under their feet, ready to crush them
when they liked.
"Colbert," said the king, "you have annoyed me exceedingly to-day."
"I know it, sire." "Very good; I like that answer.
Yes, you knew it, and there was courage in the doing of it."
"I ran the risk of displeasing your majesty, but I risked, also, the
concealment of your best interests."
"What! you were afraid of something on my account?"
"I was, sire, even if it were nothing more than an indigestion," said Colbert; "for
people do not give their sovereigns such banquets as the one of to-day, unless it be
to stifle them beneath the burden of good living."
Colbert awaited the effect this coarse jest would produce upon the king; and Louis
XIV., who was the vainest and the most fastidiously delicate man in his kingdom,
forgave Colbert the joke.
"The truth is," he said, "that M. Fouquet has given me too good a meal.
Tell me, Colbert, where does he get all the money required for this enormous
expenditure,--can you tell?"
"Yes, I do know, sire." "Will you be able to prove it with
tolerable certainty?" "Easily; and to the utmost farthing."
"I know you are very exact."
"Exactitude is the principal qualification required in an intendant of finances."
"But all are not so." "I thank you majesty for so flattering a
compliment from your own lips."
"M. Fouquet, therefore, is rich--very rich, and I suppose every man knows he is so."
"Every one, sire; the living as well as the dead."
"What does that mean, Monsieur Colbert?"
"The living are witnesses of M. Fouquet's wealth,--they admire and applaud the result
produced; but the dead, wiser and better informed than we are, know how that wealth
was obtained--and they rise up in accusation."
"So that M. Fouquet owes his wealth to some cause or other."
"The occupation of an intendant very often favors those who practice it."
"You have something to say to me more confidentially, I perceive; do not be
afraid, we are quite alone."
"I am never afraid of anything under the shelter of my own conscience, and under the
protection of your majesty," said Colbert, bowing.
"If the dead, therefore, were to speak--"
"They do speak sometimes, sire,--read."
"Ah!" murmured Aramis, in the prince's ear, who, close beside him, listened without
losing a syllable, "since you are placed here, monseigneur, in order to learn your
vocation of a king, listen to a piece of infamy--of a nature truly royal.
You are about to be a witness of one of those scenes which the foul fiend alone
conceives and executes.
Listen attentively,--you will find your advantage in it."
The prince redoubled his attention, and saw Louis XIV. take from Colbert's hands a
letter the latter held out to him.
"The late cardinal's handwriting," said the king.
"Your majesty has an excellent memory," replied Colbert, bowing; "it is an immense
advantage for a king who is destined for hard work to recognize handwritings at the
first glance."
The king read Mazarin's letter, and, as its contents are already known to the reader,
in consequence of the misunderstanding between Madame de Chevreuse and Aramis,
nothing further would be learned if we stated them here again.
"I do not quite understand," said the king, greatly interested.
"Your majesty has not acquired the utilitarian habit of checking the public
accounts." "I see that it refers to money that had
been given to M. Fouquet."
"Thirteen millions. A tolerably good sum."
"Yes. Well, these thirteen millions are wanting to balance the total of the
account.
That is what I do not very well understand. How was this deficit possible?"
"Possible I do not say; but there is no doubt about fact that it is really so."
"You say that these thirteen millions are found to be wanting in the accounts?"
"I do not say so, but the registry does."
"And this letter of M. Mazarin indicates the employment of that sum and the name of
the person with whom it was deposited?" "As your majesty can judge for yourself."
"Yes; and the result is, then, that M. Fouquet has not yet restored the thirteen
millions." "That results from the accounts, certainly,
sire."
"Well, and, consequently--"
"Well, sire, in that case, inasmuch as M. Fouquet has not yet given back the thirteen
millions, he must have appropriated them to his own purpose; and with those thirteen
millions one could incur four times and a
little more as much expense, and make four times as great a display, as your majesty
was able to do at Fontainebleau, where we only spent three millions altogether, if
you remember."
For a blunderer, the souvenir he had evoked was a rather skillfully contrived piece of
baseness; for by the remembrance of his own fete he, for the first time, perceived its
inferiority compared with that of Fouquet.
Colbert received back again at Vaux what Fouquet had given him at Fontainebleau,
and, as a good financier, returned it with the best possible interest.
Having once disposed the king's mind in this artful way, Colbert had nothing of
much importance to detain him.
He felt that such was the case, for the king, too, had again sunk into a dull and
gloomy state.
Colbert awaited the first words from the king's lips with as much impatience as
Philippe and Aramis did from their place of observation.
"Are you aware what is the usual and natural consequence of all this, Monsieur
Colbert?" said the king, after a few moments' reflection.
"No, sire, I do not know."
"Well, then, the fact of the appropriation of the thirteen millions, if it can be
proved--" "But it is so already."
"I mean if it were to be declared and certified, M. Colbert."
"I think it will be to-morrow, if your majesty--"
"Were we not under M. Fouquet's roof, you were going to say, perhaps," replied the
king, with something of nobility in his demeanor.
"The king is in his own palace wherever he may be--especially in houses which the
royal money has constructed."
"I think," said Philippe in a low tone to Aramis, "that the architect who planned
this dome ought, anticipating the use it could be put to at a future opportunity, so
to have contrived that it might be made to
fall upon the heads of scoundrels such as M. Colbert."
"I think so too," replied Aramis; "but M. Colbert is so very near the king at this
moment."
"That is true, and that would open the succession."
"Of which your younger brother would reap all the advantage, monseigneur.
But stay, let us keep quiet, and go on listening."
"We shall not have long to listen," said the young prince.
"Why not, monseigneur?"
"Because, if I were king, I should make no further reply."
"And what would you do?" "I should wait until to-morrow morning to
give myself time for reflection."
Louis XIV. at last raised his eyes, and finding Colbert attentively waiting for his
next remarks, said, hastily, changing the conversation, "M. Colbert, I perceive it is
getting very late, and I shall now retire to bed.
By to-morrow morning I shall have made up my mind."
"Very good, sire," returned Colbert, greatly incensed, although he restrained
himself in the presence of the king. The king made a gesture of adieu, and
Colbert withdrew with a respectful bow.
"My attendants!" cried the king; and, as they entered the apartment, Philippe was
about to quit his post of observation.
"A moment longer," said Aramis to him, with his accustomed gentleness of manner; "what
has just now taken place is only a detail, and to-morrow we shall have no occasion to
think anything more about it; but the
ceremony of the king's retiring to rest, the etiquette observed in addressing the
king, that indeed is of the greatest importance.
Learn, sire, and study well how you ought to go to bed of a night.
Look! look!"
>
CHAPTER XV. Colbert.
History will tell us, or rather history has told us, of the various events of the
following day, of the splendid fetes given by the surintendant to his sovereign.
Nothing but amusement and delight was allowed to prevail throughout the whole of
the following day; there was a promenade, a banquet, a comedy to be acted, and a
comedy, too, in which, to his great
amazement, Porthos recognized "M. Coquelin de Voliere" as one of the actors, in the
piece called "Les Facheux."
Full of preoccupation, however, from the scene of the previous evening, and hardly
recovered from the effects of the poison which Colbert had then administered to him,
the king, during the whole of the day, so
brilliant in its effects, so full of unexpected and startling novelties, in
which all the wonders of the "Arabian Night's Entertainments" seemed to be
reproduced for his especial amusement--the
king, we say, showed himself cold, reserved, and taciturn.
Nothing could smooth the frowns upon his face; every one who observed him noticed
that a deep feeling of resentment, of remote origin, increased by slow degrees,
as the source becomes a river, thanks to
the thousand threads of water that increase its body, was keenly alive in the depths of
the king's heart.
Towards the middle of the day only did he begin to resume a little serenity of
manner, and by that time he had, in all probability, made up his mind.
Aramis, who followed him step by step in his thoughts, as in his walk, concluded
that the event he was expecting would not be long before it was announced.
This time Colbert seemed to walk in concert with the bishop of Vannes, and had he
received for every annoyance which he inflicted on the king a word of direction
from Aramis, he could not have done better.
During the whole of the day the king, who, in all probability, wished to free himself
from some of the thoughts which disturbed his mind, seemed to seek La Valliere's
society as actively as he seemed to show
his anxiety to flee that of M. Colbert or M. Fouquet.
The evening came.
The king had expressed a wish not to walk in the park until after cards in the
evening. In the interval between supper and the
promenade, cards and dice were introduced.
The king won a thousand pistoles, and, having won them, put them in his pocket,
and then rose, saying, "And now, gentlemen, to the park."
He found the ladies of the court were already there.
The king, we have before observed, had won a thousand pistoles, and had put them in
his pocket; but M. Fouquet had somehow contrived to lose ten thousand, so that
among the courtiers there was still left a
hundred and ninety thousand francs' profit to divide, a circumstance which made the
countenances of the courtiers and the officers of the king's household the most
joyous countenances in the world.
It was not the same, however, with the king's face; for, notwithstanding his
success at play, to which he was by no means insensible, there still remained a
slight shade of dissatisfaction.
Colbert was waiting for or upon him at the corner of one of the avenues; he was most
probably waiting there in consequence of a rendezvous which had been given him by the
king, as Louis XIV., who had avoided him,
or who had seemed to avoid him, suddenly made him a sign, and they then struck into
the depths of the park together.
But La Valliere, too, had observed the king's gloomy aspect and kindling glances;
she had remarked this--and as nothing which lay hidden or smoldering in his heart was
hidden from the gaze of her affection, she
understood that this repressed wrath menaced some one; she prepared to withstand
the current of his vengeance, and intercede like an angel of mercy.
Overcome by sadness, nervously agitated, deeply distressed at having been so long
separated from her lover, disturbed at the sight of the emotion she had divined, she
accordingly presented herself to the king
with an embarrassed aspect, which in his then disposition of mind the king
interpreted unfavorably.
Then, as they were alone--nearly alone, inasmuch as Colbert, as soon as he
perceived the young girl approaching, had stopped and drawn back a dozen paces--the
king advanced towards La Valliere and took her by the hand.
"Mademoiselle," he said to her, "should I be guilty of an indiscretion if I were to
inquire if you were indisposed? for you seem to breathe as if you were oppressed by
some secret cause of uneasiness, and your eyes are filled with tears."
"Oh! sire, if I be indeed so, and if my eyes are indeed full of tears, I am
sorrowful only at the sadness which seems to oppress your majesty."
"My sadness?
You are mistaken, mademoiselle; no, it is not sadness I experience."
"What is it, then, sire?" "Humiliation."
"Humiliation? oh! sire, what a word for you to use!"
"I mean, mademoiselle, that wherever I may happen to be, no one else ought to be the
master.
Well, then, look round you on every side, and judge whether I am not eclipsed--I, the
king of France--before the monarch of these wide domains.
Oh!" he continued, clenching his hands and teeth, "when I think that this king--"
"Well, sire?" said Louise, terrified.
"--That this king is a faithless, unworthy servant, who grows proud and self-
sufficient upon the strength of property that belongs to me, and which he has
stolen.
And therefore I am about to change this impudent minister's fete into sorrow and
mourning, of which the nymph of Vaux, as the poets say, shall not soon lose the
remembrance."
"Oh! your majesty--" "Well, mademoiselle, are you about to take
M. Fouquet's part?" said Louis, impatiently.
"No, sire; I will only ask whether you are well informed.
Your majesty has more than once learned the value of accusations made at court."
Louis XIV. made a sign for Colbert to approach.
"Speak, Monsieur Colbert," said the young prince, "for I almost believe that
Mademoiselle de la Valliere has need of your assistance before she can put any
faith in the king's word.
Tell mademoiselle what M. Fouquet has done; and you, mademoiselle, will perhaps have
the kindness to listen. It will not be long."
Why did Louis XIV. insist upon it in such a manner?
A very simple reason--his heart was not at rest, his mind was not thoroughly
convinced; he imagined there lay some dark, hidden, tortuous intrigue behind these
thirteen millions of francs; and he wished
that the pure heart of La Valliere, which had revolted at the idea of theft or
robbery, should approve--even were it only by a single word--the resolution he had
taken, and which, nevertheless, he hesitated before carrying into execution.
"Speak, monsieur," said La Valliere to Colbert, who had advanced; "speak, since
the king wishes me to listen to you.
Tell me, what is the crime with which M. Fouquet is charged?"
"Oh! not very heinous, mademoiselle," he returned, "a mere abuse of confidence."
"Speak, speak, Colbert; and when you have related it, leave us, and go and inform M.
d'Artagnan that I have certain orders to give him."
"M. d'Artagnan, sire!" exclaimed La Valliere; "but why send for M. d'Artagnan?
I entreat you to tell me."
"Pardieu! in order to arrest this haughty, arrogant Titan who, true to his menace,
threatens to scale my heaven." "Arrest M. Fouquet, do you say?"
"Ah! does that surprise you?"
"In his own house!" "Why not?
If he be guilty, he is as guilty in his own house as anywhere else."
"M. Fouquet, who at this moment is ruining himself for his sovereign."
"In plain truth, mademoiselle, it seems as if you were defending this traitor."
Colbert began to chuckle silently.
The king turned round at the sound of this suppressed mirth.
"Sire," said La Valliere, "it is not M. Fouquet I am defending; it is yourself."
"Me! you are defending me?"
"Sire, you would dishonor yourself if you were to give such an order."
"Dishonor myself!" murmured the king, turning pale with anger.
"In plain truth, mademoiselle, you show a strange persistence in what you say."
"If I do, sire, my only motive is that of serving your majesty," replied the noble-
hearted girl: "for that I would risk, I would sacrifice my very life, without the
least reserve."
Colbert seemed inclined to grumble and complain.
La Valliere, that timid, gentle lamb, turned round upon him, and with a glance
like lightning imposed silence upon him.
"Monsieur," she said, "when the king acts well, whether, in doing so, he does either
myself or those who belong to me an injury, I have nothing to say; but were the king to
confer a benefit either upon me or mine,
and if he acted badly, I should tell him so."
"But it appears to me, mademoiselle," Colbert ventured to say, "that I too love
the king."
"Yes, monseigneur, we both love him, but each in a different manner," replied La
Valliere, with such an accent that the heart of the young king was powerfully
affected by it.
"I love him so deeply, that the whole world is aware of it; so purely, that the king
himself does not doubt my affection. He is my king and my master; I am the least
of all his servants.
But whoso touches his honor assails my life.
Therefore, I repeat, that they dishonor the king who advise him to arrest M. Fouquet
under his own roof."
Colbert hung down his head, for he felt that the king had abandoned him.
However, as he bent his head, he murmured, "Mademoiselle, I have only one word to
say."
"Do not say it, then, monsieur; for I would not listen to it.
Besides, what could you have to tell me? That M. Fouquet has been guilty of certain
crimes?
I believe he has, because the king has said so; and, from the moment the king said, 'I
think so,' I have no occasion for other lips to say, 'I affirm it.'
But, were M. Fouquet the vilest of men, I should say aloud, 'M. Fouquet's person is
sacred to the king because he is the guest of M. Fouquet.
Were his house a den of thieves, were Vaux a cave of coiners or robbers, his home is
sacred, his palace is inviolable, since his wife is living in it; and that is an asylum
which even executioners would not dare to violate.'"
La Valliere paused, and was silent.
In spite of himself the king could not but admire her; he was overpowered by the
passionate energy of her voice; by the nobleness of the cause she advocated.
Colbert yielded, overcome by the inequality of the struggle.
At last the king breathed again more freely, shook his head, and held out his
hand to La Valliere.
"Mademoiselle," he said, gently, "why do you decide against me?
Do you know what this wretched fellow will do, if I give him time to breathe again?"
"Is he not a prey which will always be within your grasp?"
"Should he escape, and take to flight?" exclaimed Colbert.
"Well, monsieur, it will always remain on record, to the king's eternal honor, that
he allowed M. Fouquet to flee; and the more guilty he may have been, the greater will
the king's honor and glory appear, compared with such unnecessary misery and shame."
Louis kissed La Valliere's hand, as he knelt before her.
"I am lost," thought Colbert; then suddenly his face brightened up again.
"Oh! no, no, aha, old fox!--not yet," he said to himself.
And while the king, protected from observation by the thick covert of an
enormous lime, pressed La Valliere to his breast, with all the ardor of ineffable
affection, Colbert tranquilly fumbled among
the papers in his pocket-book and drew out of it a paper folded in the form of a
letter, somewhat yellow, perhaps, but one that must have been most precious, since
the intendant smiled as he looked at it; he
then bent a look, full of hatred, upon the charming group which the young girl and the
king formed together--a group revealed but for a moment, as the light of the
approaching torches shone upon it.
Louis noticed the light reflected upon La Valliere's white dress.
"Leave me, Louise," he said, "for some one is coming."
"Mademoiselle, mademoiselle, some one is coming," cried Colbert, to expedite the
young girl's departure.
Louise disappeared rapidly among the trees; and then, as the king, who had been on his
knees before the young girl, was rising from his humble posture, Colbert exclaimed,
"Ah! Mademoiselle de la Valliere has let something fall."
"What is it?" inquired the king. "A paper--a letter--something white; look
there, sire."
The king stooped down immediately and picked up the letter, crumpling it in his
hand, as he did so; and at the same moment the torches arrived, inundating the
blackness of the scene with a flood of light as bight as day.
>
CHAPTER XVI. Jealousy.
The torches we have just referred to, the eager attention every one displayed, and
the new ovation paid to the king by Fouquet, arrived in time to suspend the
effect of a resolution which La Valliere
had already considerably shaken in Louis XIV.'s heart.
He looked at Fouquet with a feeling almost of gratitude for having given La Valliere
an opportunity of showing herself so generously disposed, so powerful in the
influence she exercised over his heart.
The moment of the last and greatest display had arrived.
Hardly had Fouquet conducted the king towards the chateau, when a mass of fire
burst from the dome of Vaux, with a prodigious uproar, pouring a flood of
dazzling cataracts of rays on every side,
and illumining the remotest corners of the gardens.
The fireworks began.
Colbert, at twenty paces from the king, who was surrounded and feted by the owner of
Vaux, seemed, by the obstinate persistence of his gloomy thoughts, to do his utmost to
recall Louis's attention, which the
magnificence of the spectacle was already, in his opinion, too easily diverting.
Suddenly, just as Louis was on the point of holding it out to Fouquet, he perceived in
his hand the paper which, as he believed, La Valliere had dropped at his feet as she
hurried away.
The still stronger magnet of love drew the young prince's attention towards the
souvenir of his idol; and, by the brilliant light, which increased momentarily in
beauty, and drew from the neighboring
villages loud cheers of admiration, the king read the letter, which he supposed was
a loving and tender epistle La Valliere had destined for him.
But as he read it, a death-like pallor stole over his face, and an expression of
deep-seated wrath, illumined by the many- colored fire which gleamed so brightly,
soaringly around the scene, produced a
terrible spectacle, which every one would have shuddered at, could they only have
read into his heart, now torn by the most stormy and most bitter passions.
There was no truce for him now, influenced as he was by jealousy and mad passion.
From the very moment when the dark truth was revealed to him, every gentler feeling
seemed to disappear; pity, kindness of consideration, the religion of hospitality,
all were forgotten.
In the bitter pang which wrung his heart, he, still too weak to hide his sufferings,
was almost on the point of uttering a cry of alarm, and calling his guards to gather
round him.
This letter which Colbert had thrown down at the king's feet, the reader has
doubtlessly guessed, was the same that had disappeared with the porter Toby at
Fontainebleau, after the attempt which Fouquet had made upon La Valliere's heart.
Fouquet saw the king's pallor, and was far from guessing the evil; Colbert saw the
king's anger, and rejoiced inwardly at the approach of the storm.
Fouquet's voice drew the young prince from his wrathful reverie.
"What is the matter, sire?" inquired the superintendent, with an expression of
graceful interest.
Louis made a violent effort over himself, as he replied, "Nothing."
"I am afraid your majesty is suffering?" "I am suffering, and have already told you
so, monsieur; but it is nothing."
And the king, without waiting for the termination of the fireworks, turned
towards the chateau.
Fouquet accompanied him, and the whole court followed, leaving the remains of the
fireworks consuming for their own amusement.
The superintendent endeavored again to question Louis XIV., but did not succeed in
obtaining a reply.
He imagined there had been some misunderstanding between Louis and La
Valliere in the park, which had resulted in a slight quarrel; and that the king, who
was not ordinarily sulky by disposition,
but completely absorbed by his passion for La Valliere, had taken a dislike to every
one because his mistress had shown herself offended with him.
This idea was sufficient to console him; he had even a friendly and kindly smile for
the young king, when the latter wished him good night.
This, however, was not all the king had to submit to; he was obliged to undergo the
usual ceremony, which on that evening was marked by close adherence to the strictest
etiquette.
The next day was the one fixed for the departure; it was but proper that the
guests should thank their host, and show him a little attention in return for the
expenditure of his twelve millions.
The only remark, approaching to amiability, which the king could find to say to M.
Fouquet, as he took leave of him, were in these words, "M. Fouquet, you shall hear
from me.
Be good enough to desire M. d'Artagnan to come here."
But the blood of Louis XIV., who had so profoundly dissimulated his feelings,
boiled in his veins; and he was perfectly willing to order M. Fouquet to be put an
end to with the same readiness, indeed, as
his predecessor had caused the assassination of le Marechal d'Ancre; and
so he disguised the terrible resolution he had formed beneath one of those royal
smiles which, like lightning-flashes, indicated coups d'etat.
Fouquet took the king's hand and kissed it; Louis shuddered throughout his whole frame,
but allowed M. Fouquet to touch his hand with his lips.
Five minutes afterwards, D'Artagnan, to whom the royal order had been communicated,
entered Louis XIV.'s apartment.
Aramis and Philippe were in theirs, still eagerly attentive, and still listening with
all their ears.
The king did not even give the captain of the musketeers time to approach his
armchair, but ran forward to meet him. "Take care," he exclaimed, "that no one
enters here."
"Very good, sire," replied the captain, whose glance had for a long time past
analyzed the stormy indications on the royal countenance.
He gave the necessary order at the door; but, returning to the king, he said, "Is
there something fresh the matter, your majesty?"
"How many men have you here?" inquired the king, without making any other reply to the
question addressed to him. "What for, sire?"
"How many men have you, I say?" repeated the king, stamping upon the ground with his
foot. "I have the musketeers."
"Well; and what others?"
"Twenty guards and thirteen Swiss." "How many men will be required to--"
"To do what, sire?" replied the musketeer, opening his large, calm eyes.
"To arrest M. Fouquet."
D'Artagnan fell back a step. "To arrest M. Fouquet!" he burst forth.
"Are you going to tell me that it is impossible?" exclaimed the king, in tones
of cold, vindictive passion.
"I never say that anything is impossible," replied D'Artagnan, wounded to the quick.
"Very well; do it, then."
D'Artagnan turned on his heel, and made his way towards the door; it was but a short
distance, and he cleared it in half a dozen paces; when he reached it he suddenly
paused, and said, "Your majesty will
forgive me, but, in order to effect this arrest, I should like written directions."
"For what purpose--and since when has the king's word been insufficient for you?"
"Because the word of a king, when it springs from a feeling of anger, may
possibly change when the feeling changes." "A truce to set phrases, monsieur; you have
another thought besides that?"
"Oh, I, at least, have certain thoughts and ideas, which, unfortunately, others have
not," D'Artagnan replied, impertinently.
The king, in the tempest of his wrath, hesitated, and drew back in the face of
D'Artagnan's frank courage, just as a horse crouches on his haunches under the strong
hand of a bold and experienced rider.
"What is your thought?" he exclaimed. "This, sire," replied D'Artagnan: "you
cause a man to be arrested when you are still under his roof; and passion is alone
the cause of that.
When your anger shall have passed, you will regret what you have done; and then I wish
to be in a position to show you your signature.
If that, however, should fail to be a reparation, it will at least show us that
the king was wrong to lose his temper." "Wrong to lose his temper!" cried the king,
in a loud, passionate voice.
"Did not my father, my grandfathers, too, before me, lose their temper at times, in
Heaven's name?"
"The king your father and the king your grandfather never lost their temper except
when under the protection of their own palace."
"The king is master wherever he may be."
"That is a flattering, complimentary phrase which cannot proceed from any one but M.
Colbert; but it happens not to be the truth.
The king is at home in every man's house when he has driven its owner out of it."
The king bit his lips, but said nothing.
"Can it be possible?" said D'Artagnan; "here is a man who is positively ruining
himself in order to please you, and you wish to have him arrested!
Mordioux!
Sire, if my name was Fouquet, and people treated me in that manner, I would swallow
at a single gulp all sorts of fireworks and other things, and I would set fire to them,
and send myself and everybody else in blown-up atoms to the sky.
But it is all the same; it is your wish, and it shall be done."
"Go," said the king; "but have you men enough?"
"Do you suppose I am going to take a whole host to help me?
Arrest M. Fouquet! why, that is so easy that a very child might do it!
It is like drinking a glass of wormwood; one makes an ugly face, and that is all."
"If he defends himself?"
"He! it is not at all likely. Defend himself when such extreme harshness
as you are going to practice makes the man a very martyr!
Nay, I am sure that if he has a million of francs left, which I very much doubt, he
would be willing enough to give it in order to have such a termination as this.
But what does that matter? it shall be done at once."
"Stay," said the king; "do not make his arrest a public affair."
"That will be more difficult."
"Why so?" "Because nothing is easier than to go up to
M. Fouquet in the midst of a thousand enthusiastic guests who surround him, and
say, 'In the king's name, I arrest you.'
But to go up to him, to turn him first one way and then another, to drive him up into
one of the corners of the chess-board, in such a way that he cannot escape; to take
him away from his guests, and keep him a
prisoner for you, without one of them, alas! having heard anything about it; that,
indeed, is a genuine difficulty, the greatest of all, in truth; and I hardly see
how it is to be done."
"You had better say it is impossible, and you will have finished much sooner.
Heaven help me, but I seem to be surrounded by people who prevent me doing what I
wish."
"I do not prevent your doing anything. Have you indeed decided?"
"Take care of M. Fouquet, until I shall have made up my mind by to-morrow morning."
"That shall be done, sire."
"And return, when I rise in the morning, for further orders; and now leave me to
myself."
"You do not even want M. Colbert, then?" said the musketeer, firing his last shot as
he was leaving the room. The king started.
With his whole mind fixed on the thought of revenge, he had forgotten the cause and
substance of the offense. "No, no one," he said; "no one here!
Leave me."
D'Artagnan quitted the room.
The king closed the door with his own hands, and began to walk up and down his
apartment at a furious pace, like a wounded bull in an arena, trailing from his horn
the colored streamers and the iron darts.
At last he began to take comfort in the expression of his violent feelings.
"Miserable wretch that he is! not only does he squander my finances, but with his ill-
gotten plunder he corrupts secretaries, friends, generals, artists, and all, and
tries to rob me of the one to whom I am most attached.
This is the reason that perfidious girl so boldly took his part!
Gratitude! and who can tell whether it was not a stronger feeling--love itself?"
He gave himself up for a moment to the bitterest reflections.
"A satyr!" he thought, with that abhorrent hate with which young men regard those more
advanced in life, who still think of love.
"A man who has never found opposition or resistance in any one, who lavishes his
gold and jewels in every direction, and who retains his staff of painters in order to
take the portraits of his mistresses in the costume of goddesses."
The king trembled with passion as he continued, "He pollutes and profanes
everything that belongs to me!
He destroys everything that is mine. He will be my death at last, I know.
That man is too much for me; he is my mortal enemy, but he shall forthwith fall!
I hate him--I hate him--I hate him!" and as he pronounced these words, he struck the
arm of the chair in which he was sitting violently, over and over again, and then
rose like one in an epileptic fit.
"To-morrow! to-morrow! oh, happy day!" he murmured, "when the sun rises, no other
rival shall that brilliant king of space possess but me.
That man shall fall so low that when people look at the abject ruin my anger shall have
wrought, they will be forced to confess at last and at least that I am indeed greater
than he."
The king, who was incapable of mastering his emotions any longer, knocked over with
a blow of his fist a small table placed close to his bedside, and in the very
bitterness of anger, almost weeping, and
half-suffocated, he threw himself on his bed, dressed as he was, and bit the sheets
in his extremity of passion, trying to find repose of body at least there.
The bed creaked beneath his weight, and with the exception of a few broken sounds,
emerging, or, one might say, exploding, from his overburdened chest, absolute
silence soon reigned in the chamber of Morpheus.
>
CHAPTER XVII. High Treason.
The ungovernable fury which took possession of the king at the sight and at the perusal
of Fouquet's letter to La Valliere by degrees subsided into a feeling of pain and
extreme weariness.
Youth, invigorated by health and lightness of spirits, requiring soon that what it
loses should be immediately restored--youth knows not those endless, sleepless nights
which enable us to realize the fable of the
vulture unceasingly feeding on Prometheus.
In cases where the man of middle life, in his acquired strength of will and purpose,
and the old, in their state of natural exhaustion, find incessant augmentation of
their bitter sorrow, a young man, surprised
by the sudden appearance of misfortune, weakens himself in sighs, and groans, and
tears, directly struggling with his grief, and is thereby far sooner overthrown by the
inflexible enemy with whom he is engaged.
Once overthrown, his struggles cease.
Louis could not hold out more than a few minutes, at the end of which he had ceased
to clench his hands, and scorch in fancy with his looks the invisible objects of his
hatred; he soon ceased to attack with his
violent imprecations not M. Fouquet alone, but even La Valliere herself; from fury he
subsided into despair, and from despair to prostration.
After he had thrown himself for a few minutes to and fro convulsively on his bed,
his nerveless arms fell quietly down; his head lay languidly on his pillow; his
limbs, exhausted with excessive emotion,
still trembled occasionally, agitated by muscular contractions; while from his
breast faint and infrequent sighs still issued.
Morpheus, the tutelary deity of the apartment, towards whom Louis raised his
eyes, wearied by his anger and reconciled by his tears, showered down upon him the
sleep-inducing poppies with which his hands
are ever filled; so presently the monarch closed his eyes and fell asleep.
Then it seemed to him, as it often happens in that first sleep, so light and gentle,
which raises the body above the couch, and the soul above the earth--it seemed to him,
we say, as if the god Morpheus, painted on
the ceiling, looked at him with eyes resembling human eyes; that something shone
brightly, and moved to and fro in the dome above the sleeper; that the crowd of
terrible dreams which thronged together in
his brain, and which were interrupted for a moment, half revealed a human face, with a
hand resting against the mouth, and in an attitude of deep and absorbed meditation.
And strange enough, too, this man bore so wonderful a resemblance to the king
himself, that Louis fancied he was looking at his own face reflected in a mirror; with
the exception, however, that the face was
saddened by a feeling of the profoundest pity.
Then it seemed to him as if the dome gradually retired, escaping from his gaze,
and that the figures and attributes painted by Lebrun became darker and darker as the
distance became more and more remote.
A gentle, easy movement, as regular as that by which a vessel plunges beneath the
waves, had succeeded to the immovableness of the bed.
Doubtless the king was dreaming, and in this dream the crown of gold, which
fastened the curtains together, seemed to recede from his vision, just as the dome,
to which it remained suspended, had done,
so that the winged genius which, with both its hand, supported the crown, seemed,
though vainly so, to call upon the king, who was fast disappearing from it.
The bed still sunk.
Louis, with his eyes open, could not resist the deception of this cruel hallucination.
At last, as the light of the royal chamber faded away into darkness and gloom,
something cold, gloomy, and inexplicable in its nature seemed to infect the air.
No paintings, nor gold, nor velvet hangings, were visible any longer, nothing
but walls of a dull gray color, which the increasing gloom made darker every moment.
And yet the bed still continued to descend, and after a minute, which seemed in its
duration almost an age to the king, it reached a stratum of air, black and chill
as death, and then it stopped.
The king could no longer see the light in his room, except as from the bottom of a
well we can see the light of day. "I am under the influence of some atrocious
dream," he thought.
"It is time to awaken from it. Come! let me wake."
Every one has experienced the sensation the above remark conveys; there is hardly a
person who, in the midst of a nightmare whose influence is suffocating, has not
said to himself, by the help of that light
which still burns in the brain when every human light is extinguished, "It is nothing
but a dream, after all."
This was precisely what Louis XIV. said to himself; but when he said, "Come, come!
wake up," he perceived that not only was he already awake, but still more, that he had
his eyes open also.
And then he looked all round him.
On his right hand and on his left two armed men stood in stolid silence, each wrapped
in a huge cloak, and the face covered with a mask; one of them held a small lamp in
his hand, whose glimmering light revealed
the saddest picture a king could look upon.
Louis could not help saying to himself that his dream still lasted, and that all he had
to do to cause it to disappear was to move his arms or to say something aloud; he
darted from his bed, and found himself upon the damp, moist ground.
Then, addressing himself to the man who held the lamp in his hand, he said:
"What is this, monsieur, and what is the meaning of this jest?"
"It is no jest," replied in a deep voice the masked figure that held the lantern.
"Do you belong to M. Fouquet?" inquired the king, greatly astonished at his situation.
"It matters very little to whom we belong," said the phantom; "we are your masters now,
that is sufficient."
The king, more impatient than intimidated, turned to the other masked figure.
"If this is a comedy," he said, "you will tell M. Fouquet that I find it unseemly and
improper, and that I command it should cease."
The second masked person to whom the king had addressed himself was a man of huge
stature and vast circumference. He held himself erect and motionless as any
block of marble.
"Well!" added the king, stamping his foot, "you do not answer!"
"We do not answer you, my good monsieur," said the giant, in a stentorian voice,
"because there is nothing to say."
"At least, tell me what you want," exclaimed Louis, folding his arms with a
passionate gesture. "You will know by and by," replied the man
who held the lamp.
"In the meantime tell me where I am." "Look."
Louis looked all round him; but by the light of the lamp which the masked figure
raised for the purpose, he could perceive nothing but the damp walls which glistened
here and there with the slimy traces of the snail.
"Oh--oh!--a dungeon," cried the king. "No, a subterranean passage."
"Which leads--?"
"Will you be good enough to follow us?" "I shall not stir from hence!" cried the
king.
"If you are obstinate, my dear young friend," replied the taller of the two, "I
will lift you up in my arms, and roll you up in your own cloak, and if you should
happen to be stifled, why--so much the worse for you."
As he said this, he disengaged from beneath his cloak a hand of which Milo of Crotona
would have envied him the possession, on the day when he had that unhappy idea of
rending his last oak.
The king dreaded violence, for he could well believe that the two men into whose
power he had fallen had not gone so far with any idea of drawing back, and that
they would consequently be ready to proceed to extremities, if necessary.
He shook his head and said: "It seems I have fallen into the hands of a couple of
assassins.
Move on, then." Neither of the men answered a word to this
remark.
The one who carried the lantern walked first, the king followed him, while the
second masked figure closed the procession.
In this manner they passed along a winding gallery of some length, with as many
staircases leading out of it as are to be found in the mysterious and gloomy palaces
of Ann Radcliffe's creation.
All these windings and turnings, during which the king heard the sound of running
water over his head, ended at last in a long corridor closed by an iron door.
The figure with the lamp opened the door with one of the keys he wore suspended at
his girdle, where, during the whole of the brief journey, the king had heard them
rattle.
As soon as the door was opened and admitted the air, Louis recognized the balmy odors
that trees exhale in hot summer nights.
He paused, hesitatingly, for a moment or two; but the huge sentinel who followed him
thrust him out of the subterranean passage.
"Another blow," said the king, turning towards the one who had just had the
audacity to touch his sovereign; "what do you intend to do with the king of France?"
"Try to forget that word," replied the man with the lamp, in a tone which as little
admitted of a reply as one of the famous decrees of Minos.
"You deserve to be broken on the wheel for the words that you have just made use of,"
said the giant, as he extinguished the lamp his companion handed to him; "but the king
is too kind-hearted."
Louis, at that threat, made so sudden a movement that it seemed as if he meditated
flight; but the giant's hand was in a moment placed on his shoulder, and fixed
him motionless where he stood.
"But tell me, at least, where we are going," said the king.
"Come," replied the former of the two men, with a kind of respect in his manner, and
leading his prisoner towards a carriage which seemed to be in waiting.
The carriage was completely concealed amid the trees.
Two horses, with their feet fettered, were fastened by a halter to the lower branches
of a large oak.
"Get in," said the same man, opening the carriage-door and letting down the step.
The king obeyed, seated himself at the back of the carriage, the padded door of which
was shut and locked immediately upon him and his guide.
As for the giant, he cut the fastenings by which the horses were bound, harnessed them
himself, and mounted on the box of the carriage, which was unoccupied.
The carriage set off immediately at a quick trot, turned into the road to Paris, and in
the forest of Senart found a relay of horses fastened to the trees in the same
manner the first horses had been, and without a postilion.
The man on the box changed the horses, and continued to follow the road towards Paris
with the same rapidity, so that they entered the city about three o'clock in the
morning.
They carriage proceeded along the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and, after having called out
to the sentinel, "By the king's order," the driver conducted the horses into the
circular inclosure of the Bastile, looking
out upon the courtyard, called La Cour du Gouvernement.
There the horses drew up, reeking with sweat, at the flight of steps, and a
sergeant of the guard ran forward.
"Go and wake the governor," said the coachman in a voice of thunder.
With the exception of this voice, which might have been heard at the entrance of
the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, everything remained as calm in the carriage as in the
prison.
Ten minutes afterwards, M. de Baisemeaux appeared in his dressing-gown on the
threshold of the door. "What is the matter now?" he asked; "and
whom have you brought me there?"
The man with the lantern opened the carriage-door, and said two or three words
to the one who acted as driver, who immediately got down from his seat, took up
a short musket which he kept under his
feet, and placed its muzzle on his prisoner's chest.
"And fire at once if he speaks!" added aloud the man who alighted from the
carriage.
"Very good," replied his companion, without another remark.
With this recommendation, the person who had accompanied the king in the carriage
ascended the flight of steps, at the top of which the governor was awaiting him.
"Monsieur d'Herblay!" said the latter.
"Hush!" said Aramis. "Let us go into your room."
"Good heavens! what brings you here at this hour?"
"A mistake, my dear Monsieur de Baisemeaux," Aramis replied, quietly.
"It appears that you were quite right the other day."
"What about?" inquired the governor.
"About the order of release, my dear friend."
"Tell me what you mean, monsieur--no, monseigneur," said the governor, almost
suffocated by surprise and terror.
"It is a very simple affair: you remember, dear M. de Baisemeaux, that an order of
release was sent to you." "Yes, for Marchiali."
"Very good! we both thought that it was for Marchiali?"
"Certainly; you will recollect, however, that I would not credit it, but that you
compelled me to believe it."
"Oh! Baisemeaux, my good fellow, what a word to make use of!--strongly recommended,
that was all."
"Strongly recommended, yes; strongly recommended to give him up to you; and that
you carried him off with you in your carriage."
"Well, my dear Monsieur de Baisemeaux, it was a mistake; it was discovered at the
ministry, so that I now bring you an order from the king to set at liberty Seldon,--
that poor Seldon fellow, you know."
"Seldon! are you sure this time?" "Well, read it yourself," added Aramis,
handing him the order.
"Why," said Baisemeaux, "this order is the very same that has already passed through
my hands." "Indeed?"
"It is the very one I assured you I saw the other evening.
Parbleu! I recognize it by the blot of ink."
"I do not know whether it is that; but all I know is, that I bring it for you."
"But then, what about the other?" "What other?"
"Marchiali."
"I have got him here with me." "But that is not enough for me.
I require a new order to take him back again."
"Don't talk such nonsense, my dear Baisemeaux; you talk like a child!
Where is the order you received respecting Marchiali?"
Baisemeaux ran to his iron chest and took it out.
Aramis seized hold of it, coolly tore it in four pieces, held them to the lamp, and
burnt them.
"Good heavens! what are you doing?" exclaimed Baisemeaux, in an extremity of
terror.
"Look at your position quietly, my good governor," said Aramis, with imperturbable
self-possession, "and you will see how very simple the whole affair is.
You no longer possess any order justifying Marchiali's release."
"I am a lost man!"
"Far from it, my good fellow, since I have brought Marchiali back to you, and all
accordingly is just the same as if he had never left."
"Ah!" said the governor, completely overcome by terror.
"Plain enough, you see; and you will go and shut him up immediately."
"I should think so, indeed."
"And you will hand over this Seldon to me, whose liberation is authorized by this
order. Do you understand?"
"I--I--"
"You do understand, I see," said Aramis. "Very good."
Baisemeaux clapped his hands together.
"But why, at all events, after having taken Marchiali away from me, do you bring him
back again?" cried the unhappy governor, in a paroxysm of terror, and completely
dumbfounded.
"For a friend such as you are," said Aramis--"for so devoted a servant, I have
no secrets;" and he put his mouth close to Baisemeaux's ear, as he said, in a low tone
of voice, "you know the resemblance between that unfortunate fellow, and--"
"And the king?--yes!"
"Very good; the first use that Marchiali made of his liberty was to persist--Can you
guess what?" "How is it likely I should guess?"
"To persist in saying that he was king of France; to dress himself up in clothes like
those of the king; and then pretend to assume that he was the king himself."
"Gracious heavens!"
"That is the reason why I have brought him back again, my dear friend.
He is mad and lets every one see how mad he is."
"What is to be done, then?"
"That is very simple; let no one hold any communication with him.
You understand that when his peculiar style of madness came to the king's ears, the
king, who had pitied his terrible affliction, and saw that all his kindness
had been repaid by black ingratitude,
became perfectly furious; so that, now--and remember this very distinctly, dear
Monsieur de Baisemeaux, for it concerns you most closely--so that there is now, I
repeat, sentence of death pronounced
against all those who may allow him to communicate with any one else but me or the
king himself. You understand, Baisemeaux, sentence of
death!"
"You need not ask me whether I understand." "And now, let us go down, and conduct this
poor devil back to his dungeon again, unless you prefer he should come up here."
"What would be the good of that?"
"It would be better, perhaps, to enter his name in the prison-book at once!"
"Of course, certainly; not a doubt of it." "In that case, have him up."
Baisemeaux ordered the drums to be beaten and the bell to be rung, as a warning to
every one to retire, in order to avoid meeting a prisoner, about whom it was
desired to observe a certain mystery.
Then, when the passages were free, he went to take the prisoner from the carriage, at
whose breast Porthos, faithful to the directions which had been given him, still
kept his musket leveled.
"Ah! is that you, miserable wretch?" cried the governor, as soon as he perceived the
king. "Very good, very good."
And immediately, making the king get out of the carriage, he led him, still accompanied
by Porthos, who had not taken off his mask, and Aramis, who again resumed his, up the
stairs, to the second Bertaudiere, and
opened the door of the room in which Philippe for six long years had bemoaned
his existence.
The king entered the cell without pronouncing a single word: he faltered in
as limp and haggard as a rain-struck lily.
Baisemeaux shut the door upon him, turned the key twice in the lock, and then
returned to Aramis.
"It is quite true," he said, in a low tone, "that he bears a striking resemblance to
the king; but less so than you said."
"So that," said Aramis, "you would not have been deceived by the substitution of the
one for the other?" "What a question!"
"You are a most valuable fellow, Baisemeaux," said Aramis; "and now, set
Seldon free." "Oh, yes.
I was going to forget that.
I will go and give orders at once." "Bah! to-morrow will be time enough."
"To-morrow!--oh, no. This very minute."
"Well; go off to your affairs, I will go away to mine.
But it is quite understood, is it not?" "What 'is quite understood'?"
"That no one is to enter the prisoner's cell, expect with an order from the king;
an order which I will myself bring." "Quite so.
Adieu, monseigneur."
Aramis returned to his companion. "Now, Porthos, my good fellow, back again
to Vaux, and as fast as possible."
"A man is light and easy enough, when he has faithfully served his king; and, in
serving him, saved his country," said Porthos.
"The horses will be as light as if our tissues were constructed of the wind of
heaven. So let us be off."
And the carriage, lightened of a prisoner, who might well be--as he in fact was--very
heavy in the sight of Aramis, passed across the drawbridge of the Bastile, which was
raised again immediately behind it.
>
CHAPTER XVIII. A Night at the Bastile.
Pain, anguish, and suffering in human life are always in proportion to the strength
with which a man is endowed.
We will not pretend to say that Heaven always apportions to a man's capability of
endurance the anguish with which he afflicts him; for that, indeed, would not
be true, since Heaven permits the existence
of death, which is, sometimes, the only refuge open to those who are too closely
pressed--too bitterly afflicted, as far as the body is concerned.
Suffering is in proportion to the strength which has been accorded; in other words,
the weak suffer more, where the trial is the same, than the strong.
And what are the elementary principles, we may ask, that compose human strength?
Is it not--more than anything else-- exercise, habit, experience?
We shall not even take the trouble to demonstrate this, for it is an axiom in
morals, as in physics.
When the young king, stupefied and crushed in every sense and feeling, found himself
led to a cell in the Bastile, he fancied death itself is but a sleep; that it, too,
has its dreams as well; that the bed had
broken through the flooring of his room at Vaux; that death had resulted from the
occurrence; and that, still carrying out his dream, the king, Louis XIV., now no
longer living, was dreaming one of those
horrors, impossible to realize in life, which is termed dethronement, imprisonment,
and insult towards a sovereign who formerly wielded unlimited power.
To be present at--an actual witness, too-- of this bitterness of death; to float,
indecisively, in an incomprehensible mystery, between resemblance and reality;
to hear everything, to see everything,
without interfering in a single detail of agonizing suffering, was--so the king
thought within himself--a torture far more terrible, since it might last forever.
"Is this what is termed eternity--hell?" he murmured, at the moment the door was closed
upon him, which we remember Baisemeaux had shut with his own hands.
He did not even look round him; and in the room, leaning with his back against the
wall, he allowed himself to be carried away by the terrible supposition that he was
already dead, as he closed his eyes, in
order to avoid looking upon something even worse still.
"How can I have died?" he said to himself, sick with terror.
"The bed might have been let down by some artificial means?
But no! I do not remember to have felt a bruise,
nor any shock either.
Would they not rather have poisoned me at my meals, or with the fumes of wax, as they
did my ancestress, Jeanne d'Albret?"
Suddenly, the chill of the dungeons seemed to fall like a wet cloak upon Louis's
shoulders.
"I have seen," he said, "my father lying dead upon his funeral couch, in his regal
robes.
That pale face, so calm and worn; those hands, once so skillful, lying nerveless by
his side; those limbs stiffened by the icy grasp of death; nothing there betokened a
sleep that was disturbed by dreams.
And yet, how numerous were the dreams which Heaven might have sent that royal corpse--
him whom so many others had preceded, hurried away by him into eternal death!
No, that king was still the king: he was enthroned still upon that funeral couch, as
upon a velvet armchair; he had not abdicated one title of his majesty.
God, who had not punished him, cannot, will not punish me, who have done nothing."
A strange sound attracted the young man's attention.
He looked round him, and saw on the mantel- shelf, just below an enormous crucifix,
coarsely painted in fresco on the wall, a rat of enormous size engaged in nibbling a
piece of dry bread, but fixing all the
time, an intelligent and inquiring look upon the new occupant of the cell.
The king could not resist a sudden impulse of fear and disgust: he moved back towards
the door, uttering a loud cry; and as if he but needed this cry, which escaped from his
breast almost unconsciously, to recognize
himself, Louis knew that he was alive and in full possession of his natural senses.
"A prisoner!" he cried. "I--I, a prisoner!"
He looked round him for a bell to summon some one to him.
"There are no bells in the Bastile," he said, "and it is in the Bastile I am
imprisoned.
In what way can I have been made a prisoner?
It must have been owing to a conspiracy of M. Fouquet.
I have been drawn to Vaux, as to a snare.
M. Fouquet cannot be acting alone in this affair.
His agent--That voice that I but just now heard was M. d'Herblay's; I recognized it.
Colbert was right, then.
But what is Fouquet's object? To reign in my place and stead?--
Impossible. Yet who knows!" thought the king, relapsing
into gloom again.
"Perhaps my brother, the Duc d'Orleans, is doing that which my uncle wished to do
during the whole of his life against my father.
But the queen?--My mother, too?
And La Valliere? Oh! La Valliere, she will have been
abandoned to Madame. Dear, dear girl!
Yes, it is--it must be so.
They have shut her up as they have me. We are separated forever!"
And at this idea of separation the poor lover burst into a flood of tears and sobs
and groans.
"There is a governor in this place," the king continued, in a fury of passion; "I
will speak to him, I will summon him to me."
He called--no voice replied to his.
He seized hold of his chair, and hurled it against the massive oaken door.
The wood resounded against the door, and awakened many a mournful echo in the
profound depths of the staircase; but from a human creature, none.
This was a fresh proof for the king of the slight regard in which he was held at the
Bastile.
Therefore, when his first fit of anger had passed away, having remarked a barred
window through which there passed a stream of light, lozenge-shaped, which must be, he
knew, the bright orb of approaching day,
Louis began to call out, at first gently enough, then louder and louder still; but
no one replied.
Twenty other attempts which he made, one after another, obtained no other or better
success. His blood began to boil within him, and
mount to his head.
His nature was such, that, accustomed to command, he trembled at the idea of
disobedience.
The prisoner broke the chair, which was too heavy for him to lift, and made use of it
as a battering ram to strike against the door.
He struck so loudly, and so repeatedly, that the perspiration soon began to pour
down his face.
The sound became tremendous and continuous; certain stifled, smothered cries replied in
different directions. This sound produced a strange effect upon
the king.
He paused to listen; it was the voice of the prisoners, formerly his victims, now
his companions.
The voices ascended like vapors through the thick ceilings and the massive walls, and
rose in accusations against the author of this noise, as doubtless their sighs and
tears accused, in whispered tones, the author of their captivity.
After having deprived so many people of their liberty, the king came among them to
rob them of their rest.
This idea almost drove him mad; it redoubled his strength, or rather his well,
bent upon obtaining some information, or a conclusion to the affair.
With a portion of the broken chair he recommenced the noise.
At the end of an hour, Louis heard something in the corridor, behind the door
of his cell, and a violent blow, which was returned upon the door itself, made him
cease his own.
"Are you mad?" said a rude, brutal voice. "What is the matter with you this morning?"
"This morning!" thought the king; but he said aloud, politely, "Monsieur, are you
the governor of the Bastile?"
"My good fellow, your head is out of sorts," replied the voice; "but that is no
reason why you should make such a terrible disturbance.
Be quiet; mordioux!"
"Are you the governor?" the king inquired again.
He heard a door on the corridor close; the jailer had just left, not condescending to
reply a single word.
When the king had assured himself of his departure, his fury knew no longer any
bounds.
As agile as a tiger, he leaped from the table to the window, and struck the iron
bars with all his might.
He broke a pane of glass, the pieces of which fell clanking into the courtyard
below. He shouted with increasing hoarseness, "The
governor, the governor!"
This excess lasted fully an hour, during which time he was in a burning fever.
With his hair in disorder and matted on his forehead, his dress torn and covered with
dust and plaster, his linen in shreds, the king never rested until his strength was
utterly exhausted, and it was not until
then that he clearly understood the pitiless thickness of the walls, the
impenetrable nature of the cement, invincible to every influence but that of
time, and that he possessed no other weapon but despair.
He leaned his forehead against the door, and let the feverish throbbings of his
heart calm by degrees; it had seemed as if one single additional pulsation would have
made it burst.
"A moment will come when the food which is given to the prisoners will be brought to
me. I shall then see some one, I shall speak to
him, and get an answer."
And the king tried to remember at what hour the first repast of the prisoners was
served at the Bastile; he was ignorant even of this detail.
The feeling of remorse at this remembrance smote him like the thrust of a dagger, that
he should have lived for five and twenty years a king, and in the enjoyment of every
happiness, without having bestowed a
moment's thought on the misery of those who had been unjustly deprived of their
liberty. The king blushed for very shame.
He felt that Heaven, in permitting this fearful humiliation, did no more than
render to the man the same torture as had been inflicted by that man upon so many
others.
Nothing could be more efficacious for reawakening his mind to religious
influences than the prostration of his heart and mind and soul beneath the feeling
of such acute wretchedness.
But Louis dared not even kneel in prayer to God to entreat him to terminate his bitter
trial. "Heaven is right," he said; "Heaven acts
wisely.
It would be cowardly to pray to Heaven for that which I have so often refused my own
fellow-creatures."
He had reached this stage of his reflections, that is, of his agony of mind,
when a similar noise was again heard behind his door, followed this time by the sound
of the key in the lock, and of the bolts being withdrawn from their staples.
The king bounded forward to be nearer to the person who was about to enter, but,
suddenly reflecting that it was a movement unworthy of a sovereign, he paused, assumed
a noble and calm expression, which for him
was easy enough, and waited with his back turned towards the window, in order, to
some extent, to conceal his agitation from the eyes of the person who was about to
It was only a jailer with a basket of provisions.
The king looked at the man with restless anxiety, and waited until he spoke.
"Ah!" said the latter, "you have broken your chair.
I said you had done so! Why, you have gone quite mad."
"Monsieur," said the king, "be careful what you say; it will be a very serious affair
for you." The jailer placed the basket on the table,
and looked at his prisoner steadily.
"What do you say?" he said. "Desire the governor to come to me," added
the king, in accents full of calm and dignity.
"Come, my boy," said the turnkey, "you have always been very quiet and reasonable, but
you are getting vicious, it seems, and I wish you to know it in time.
You have broken your chair, and made a great disturbance; that is an offense
punishable by imprisonment in one of the lower dungeons.
Promise me not to begin over again, and I will not say a word about it to the
governor." "I wish to see the governor," replied the
king, still governing his passions.
"He will send you off to one of the dungeons, I tell you; so take care."
"I insist upon it, do you hear?" "Ah! ah! your eyes are becoming wild again.
Very good!
I shall take away your knife." And the jailer did what he said, quitted
the prisoner, and closed the door, leaving the king more astounded, more wretched,
more isolated than ever.
It was useless, though he tried it, to make the same noise again on his door, and
equally useless that he threw the plates and dishes out of the window; not a single
sound was heard in recognition.
Two hours afterwards he could not be recognized as a king, a gentleman, a man, a
human being; he might rather be called a madman, tearing the door with his nails,
trying to tear up the flooring of his cell,
and uttering such wild and fearful cries that the old Bastile seemed to tremble to
its very foundations for having revolted against its master.
As for the governor, the jailer did not even think of disturbing him; the turnkeys
and the sentinels had reported the occurrence to him, but what was the good of
it?
Were not these madmen common enough in such a prison? and were not the walls still
stronger?
M. de Baisemeaux, thoroughly impressed with what Aramis had told him, and in perfect
conformity with the king's order, hoped only that one thing might happen; namely,
that the madman Marchiali might be mad
enough to hang himself to the canopy of his bed, or to one of the bars of the window.
In fact, the prisoner was anything but a profitable investment for M. Baisemeaux,
and became more annoying than agreeable to him.
These complications of Seldon and Marchiali--the complications first of
setting at liberty and then imprisoning again, the complications arising from the
strong likeness in question--had at last found a very proper denouement.
Baisemeaux even thought he had remarked that D'Herblay himself was not altogether
dissatisfied with the result.
"And then, really," said Baisemeaux to his next in command, "an ordinary prisoner is
already unhappy enough in being a prisoner; he suffers quite enough, indeed, to induce
one to hope, charitably enough, that his death may not be far distant.
With still greater reason, accordingly, when the prisoner has gone mad, and might
bite and make a terrible disturbance in the Bastile; why, in such a case, it is not
simply an act of mere charity to wish him
dead; it would be almost a good and even commendable action, quietly to have him put
out of his misery." And the good-natured governor thereupon sat
down to his late breakfast.
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