Part 34

— I will sign.

— You would deliver yourself bound hand and foot for a false semblance of honour that the most scrupulous casuists would disdain?

— I will sign.

Aramis uttered a deep sigh, and looked all about him with the impatience of a man who would like to break something.

— We have one more means, he said, and I hope you will not refuse me the use of it, this one.

— Assuredly not, if it is loyal... as everything you propose, dear friend.

— I know nothing more loyal than a renunciation on the part of your purchaser. Is he your friend?

— Certainly... But...

— But... if you allow me to handle the matter, I am not without hope.

— Oh! I shall leave you absolutely master.

— With whom did you treat? What manner of man is he?

— I do not know if you are acquainted with the Parliament?

— For the most part. Is he some president?

— No; a mere councillor.

— Ah! ah!

— Who is called Vanel.

Aramis turned purple.

— Vanel! he cried, starting up; Vanel! the husband of Marguerite Vanel?

— Precisely.

— Your former mistress's?

— Yes, my dear; she desired to be Madame the procureur-general. I owed that much to poor Vanel, and I gain by it, since it is still doing his wife a pleasure.

Aramis came straight to Fouquet and took his hand.

— You know, he said coldly, the name of Madame Vanel's new lover?

— Ah! she has a new lover? I was ignorant of it; and, faith, no, I do not know what his name is.

— He is called Monsieur Jean-Baptiste Colbert; he is intendant of finances; he lives in the Rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, there where Madame de Chevreuse went this evening with the letters of Mazarin that she wishes to sell.

— My God! murmured Fouquet, wiping his brow, which streamed with sweat, my God!

— You are beginning to understand, are you not?

— That I am lost, yes.

— Do you find that it is worth while to hold to your word a little less than Regulus?

— No, said Fouquet.

— Obstinate people, murmured Aramis, always arrange matters so that one admires them.

Fouquet held out his hand to him.

At that moment, a rich tortoiseshell clock with gilded figures, placed on a console opposite the fireplace, struck six in the morning.

A door creaked in the vestibule.

— Monsieur Vanel, Gourville came to say at the cabinet door, asks if Monseigneur can receive him.

Fouquet turned his eyes from Aramis's and replied:

— Show Monsieur Vanel in.

Chapter CLXXXVIII — Monsieur Colbert's Minute

Vanel, entering at that point in the conversation, was nothing more to Aramis and Fouquet than the period that ends a sentence.

But, for Vanel who arrived, the presence of Aramis in Fouquet's cabinet must have a very different significance.

Accordingly, the purchaser, at his first step into the room, fixed upon that countenance, at once so subtle and so firm, of the Bishop of Vannes, a astonished glance which soon became searching.

As for Fouquet, a true man of politics, that is to say master of himself, he had already, by force of will, made disappear from his face the traces of the emotion caused by Aramis's revelation.

He was therefore no longer a man crushed by misfortune and reduced to expedients; he had raised his head and extended his hand to admit Vanel.

He was prime minister, he was in his own house.

Aramis knew the surintendant. All the delicacy of his heart, all the breadth of his mind, had nothing that could astonish him. He confined himself, therefore, for the moment—reserving the right to take a more active part in the conversation later—to the difficult role of a man who looks and listens in order to learn and to understand.

Vanel was visibly moved. He advanced to the middle of the cabinet, saluting everything and everyone.

— I come... he said.

Fouquet made a sign with his head.

— You are punctual, Monsieur Vanel, said he.

— In business, monseigneur, replied Vanel, I believe punctuality is a virtue.

— Yes, monsieur.

— Pardon, interrupted Aramis, pointing at Vanel and addressing Fouquet; pardon, it is Monsieur who presents himself to buy an office, is it not?

— It is I, answered Vanel, astonished at the tone of supreme haughtiness with which Aramis had put the question. But how ought I to address him who does me the honour?...

— Call me monseigneur, replied Aramis dryly.

Vanel bowed.

— Come, come, gentlemen, said Fouquet, truce to ceremonies; let us come to the point.

— Monseigneur sees, said Vanel, I await his good pleasure.

— It is I, on the contrary, who was waiting, replied Fouquet.

— What was monseigneur waiting for?

— I thought that perhaps you had something to say to me.

"Oh! oh!" murmured Vanel to himself, "he has reflected, I am lost!"

But, taking courage again:

— No, monseigneur, nothing, absolutely nothing but what I told you yesterday and am ready to repeat to you.

— Let us see, frankly, Monsieur Vanel, is not the bargain a little heavy for you, say?

— Certainly, monseigneur, fifteen hundred thousand livres is an important sum.

— So important, said Fouquet, that I had reflected...

— You had reflected, monseigneur? cried Vanel eagerly.

— Yes, that you are perhaps not yet in a position to buy.

— Oh! monseigneur!...

— Compose yourself, Monsieur Vanel, I shall not blame you for a want of word which will evidently be due to your inability.

— On the contrary, monseigneur, you would blame me, and you would be right, said Vanel; for it is the part of an imprudent or a madman to undertake engagements he cannot keep, and I have always regarded a thing agreed upon as a thing done.

Fouquet blushed. Aramis gave a murmur of impatience.

— You should not, however, exaggerate those ideas, monsieur, said the surintendant; for the mind of man is variable and full of little caprices very excusable, very respectable even at times; and he who desired yesterday repents today.

Vanel felt a cold sweat flow from his brow down his cheeks.

— Monseigneur!... he stammered.

As for Aramis, happy to see the surintendant pose with such clearness in the debate, he leaned his elbows on the marble of a console, and began to play with a small gold knife with a malachite handle.

Fouquet took his time; then, after a moment of silence:

— See here, my dear Monsieur Vanel, said he, I am going to explain the situation to you.

Vanel trembled.

— You are a man of honour, continued Fouquet, and like me you will understand.

Vanel staggered.

— I wished to sell yesterday.

— Monseigneur had done more than wish to sell, monseigneur had sold.

— Well, be it so! but today I ask you as a favour to give me back the word you had received from me.

— That word, I received it, said Vanel, as an inflexible echo.

— I know it. That is why I beseech you, Monsieur Vanel, do you hear? I beseech you to give it back to me...

Fouquet stopped. That word: I beseech you, the immediate effect of which he did not see, that word had just torn his throat in passing.

Aramis, still playing with his knife, fixed upon Vanel glances which seemed desirous of penetrating to the bottom of his soul.

Vanel bowed.

— Monseigneur, said he, I am deeply moved by the honour you do me in consulting me upon a thing accomplished; but...

— Say no but, dear Monsieur Vanel.

— Alas! monseigneur, consider that I have brought the money; I mean the sum.

And he opened a large portfolio.

— See, monseigneur, said he, here is the contract of sale that I have just made of an estate of my wife's. The bond is authorised, bearing the necessary signatures, payable at sight; it is ready money; the affair is done in a word.

— My dear Monsieur Vanel, there is no affair in this world, however important it may be, that cannot be undone to oblige...

— Certainly... Vanel murmured awkwardly.

— To oblige a man of whom one will thus make himself the friend, continued Fouquet.

— Certainly, monseigneur.

— All the more legitimately the friend, Monsieur Vanel, in that the service rendered shall have been the greater. Well! come now, monsieur, what do you decide?

Vanel kept silence.

During this time Aramis had summed up his observations.

The narrow face of Vanel, his sunken eye-sockets, his round eyebrows like arches, had revealed to the Bishop of Vannes a type of miser and ambitious man. To beat down one passion by another was Aramis's method. He saw Fouquet vanquished, demoralised; he threw himself into the struggle with new weapons.

— Pardon, said he, monseigneur; you forget to make Monsieur Vanel understand that his interests are diametrically opposed to this renunciation of the sale.

Vanel looked at the bishop with astonishment; he did not expect to find there an auxiliary. Fouquet also paused to listen to the bishop.

— Thus, continued Aramis, Monsieur Vanel has sold, to buy your office, monseigneur, an estate of Madame his wife's; well! that is a transaction, that; one does not displace, as he has done, fifteen hundred thousand livres without notable losses, without grave embarrassments.

— That is true, said Vanel, from whom Aramis, with his luminous glances, wrung the truth from the bottom of his heart.

— Embarrassments, pursued Aramis, resolve themselves into expenses, and, when one incurs an expense of money, money expenses rank Number 1 among charges.

— Yes, yes, said Fouquet, who was beginning to comprehend Aramis's intentions.

Vanel remained mute: he had understood.

Aramis noted this coldness and this abstention.

"Good!" said he to himself, "ugly face, you play the discreet until you know the sum; but fear nothing, I am going to send you such a volley of crowns that you will capitulate."

— One must at once offer Monsieur Vanel a hundred thousand crowns, said Fouquet, carried away by his generosity.

The sum was handsome. A prince would have been content with such a bribe. A hundred thousand crowns, at that time, were the dowry of a king's daughter.

Vanel did not move.

"He is a knave," thought the bishop; "he wants the full five hundred thousand livres." And he made a sign to Fouquet.

— You seem to have spent more than that, dear Monsieur Vanel, said the surintendant. Oh! money is beyond price. Yes, you will have made a sacrifice in selling that estate. Well! where had I my head? It is a bond for five hundred thousand livres that I am going to sign for you. And yet I shall be heartily your obliged servant.

Vanel showed no spark of joy or desire. His countenance remained impassive, and not a muscle of his face moved.

Aramis sent a desperate glance to Fouquet. Then, advancing towards Vanel, he took him by the top of his doublet with the gesture familiar to men of great importance.

— Monsieur Vanel, said he, it is not the straitness, it is not the displacement of money, it is not the sale of your estate that occupy you; it is a higher idea. I comprehend it. Mark my words well.

— Yes, monseigneur.

And the unhappy man began to tremble; the fire of the prelate's eyes devoured him.

— I offer you, then, I, in the name of the surintendant, not three hundred thousand livres, not five hundred thousand, but a million. A million, do you hear?

And he shook him nervously.

— A million! repeated Vanel, all pale.

— A million, that is to say, in the present times, sixty-six thousand livres of income.

— Come, monsieur, said Fouquet, that is not to be refused. Answer then; do you accept?

— Impossible... murmured Vanel.

Aramis pinched his lips, and something like a white cloud passed over his countenance.

One guessed the thunder behind that cloud. He did not release Vanel.

— You bought the office for fifteen hundred thousand livres, did you not? Well! you shall be given those fifteen hundred thousand livres; you will have gained a million and a half by coming to visit Monsieur Fouquet and touching his hand. Honour and profit both at once, Monsieur Vanel.

— I cannot, answered Vanel sullenly.

— Very well! replied Aramis, who had so tightly gripped the doublet that at the moment he let it go Vanel was thrown backward by the shock; very well! one sees clearly enough what you came here to do.

— Yes, one sees it, said Fouquet.

— But... said Vanel, trying to straighten up before the weakness of these two men of honour.

— The knave raises his voice, I think! said Aramis in an emperor's tone.

— Knave? repeated Vanel.

— It is wretch that I meant to say, added Aramis, returning to coolness. Come, quickly draw out your deed of sale, monsieur; you must have it there in some pocket, all prepared, as the assassin holds his pistol or his dagger hidden beneath his cloak.

Vanel grumbled.

— Enough! cried Fouquet. That deed, let us see!

Vanel fumbled trembling in his pocket; he drew out his portfolio, and from the portfolio escaped a paper, while Vanel offered the other to Fouquet.

Aramis pounced upon that paper, the handwriting of which he had just recognised.

— Pardon, it is the minute of the deed, said Vanel.

— I see that well enough, replied Aramis with a smile more cruel than a lash of the whip, and what I admire is that this minute is in the hand of Monsieur Colbert. See, monseigneur, look.

He passed the minute to Fouquet, who recognised the truth of the fact. Overcharged with erasures, with words added, the margins all blackened, that deed, living testimony of Colbert's plot, had just revealed everything to the victim.

— Well? murmured Fouquet.

Vanel, thunderstruck, seemed to seek some deep hole wherein to engulf himself.

— Well! said Aramis, if you were not called Fouquet, and if your enemy were not called Colbert; if you had before you only this cowardly thief here, I would say to you: Deny... such a proof destroys all word; but those people would believe you are afraid; they would fear you less; here, monseigneur.

He presented the pen to him.

— Sign, said he.

Fouquet pressed Aramis's hand; but, instead of the deed that was presented to him, he took the minute.

— No, not that paper, said Aramis quickly, but this one, the other is too precious for you not to keep it.

— Oh! not so, replied Fouquet, I will sign upon Monsieur Colbert's very handwriting, and I write: "Approved the writing."

He signed.

— Here, Monsieur Vanel, said he afterwards.

Vanel seized the paper, gave his money, and would have fled.

— A moment! said Aramis. Are you quite sure the account of the money is there? That is counted, Monsieur Vanel, especially when it is money that Monsieur Colbert gives to women. Ah! it is that he is not generous like Monsieur Fouquet, this worthy Monsieur Colbert.

And Aramis, spelling out each word, each letter of the bond payable, distilled drop by drop all his anger and all his contempt upon the wretch, who suffered this torture for a half-quarter of an hour; then he was dismissed, not even by a word, but by a gesture, as one dismisses a churl, as one drives away a lackey.

Once Vanel had gone, the minister and the prelate, their eyes fixed one upon the other, kept silence for an instant.

— Well! said Aramis, breaking the silence first, to what do you compare a man who, having to fight an armoured, armed, enraged enemy, strips himself naked, throws away his weapons, and sends gracious kisses to his adversary? Good faith, Monsieur Fouquet, is a weapon of which scoundrels often make use against honest men, and it succeeds with them. Honest men ought therefore to make use also of bad faith against knaves. You would see how strong they would be without ceasing to be honourable.

— They would call their acts the acts of knaves, replied Fouquet.

— Not at all; they would call that coquetry, probity. In short, since you have finished with this Vanel, since you have deprived yourself of the happiness of crushing him by denying your word, since you have given against yourself the only weapon that can ruin us...

— Oh! my friend, said Fouquet with sadness, you are like the philosopher tutor of whom La Fontaine spoke to us the other day... He sees the child drowning and makes him a discourse in three points.

Aramis smiled.

— Philosopher, yes; tutor, yes; child drowning, yes; but a child whom one will save, you are about to see. And first, let us speak of business.

Fouquet looked at him with a astonished air.

— Did you not confide to me not long ago a certain project of a fête at Vaux?

— Oh! said Fouquet, that was in the good times!

— A fête to which, I believe, the king had invited himself?

— No, my dear prelate; a fête to which Monsieur Colbert had advised the king to invite himself.

— Ah! yes, as being a fête too costly for you not to ruin yourself therein.

— That is it. In the good times, as I was telling you just now, I had that pride of showing my enemies the fecundity of my resources; I held to the honour of striking them with awe by creating millions where they had seen only possible bankruptcies. But today I reckon with the State, with the king, with myself; today I am going to become the man of stinginess; I shall know how to prove to the world that I deal with funds as with bags of pistoles, and, from tomorrow, my equipages sold, my houses in pawn, my expenditure suspended...

— From tomorrow, interrupted Aramis tranquilly, you are going, my dear friend, to occupy yourself without respite with that fine fête at Vaux, which must one day be cited among the heroic magnificences of your fine time.

— You are mad, Chevalier d'Herblay.

— I? You do not think so.

— How! But do you know what a fête, the simplest in the world, can cost at Vaux? Four to five millions.

— I do not speak to you of the simplest in the world, my dear surintendant.

— But, since the fête is given to the king, replied Fouquet, who mistook Aramis's thought, it cannot be simple.

— Precisely, it must be of the greatest magnificence.

— Then I shall spend ten to twelve millions.

— You will spend twenty if need be, said Aramis without emotion.

— Where should I get them? cried Fouquet.

— That concerns me, Monsieur le Surintendant, and conceive not an instant of uneasiness. The money will be at your disposal more quickly than you will have settled the plan of your fête.

— Chevalier! Chevalier! said Fouquet, seized with vertigo, where are you dragging me?

— To the other side of the gulf where you were about to fall, replied the Bishop of Vannes. Cling to my cloak; have no fear.

— Why did you not tell me that earlier, Aramis! A day came when, with a million, you would have saved me.

— Whereas, today... Whereas, today, I would give twenty, said the prelate. Well! be it so!... But the reason is simple, my friend: the day you speak of, I had not at my disposal the necessary million. Today I shall easily have the twenty millions that I need.

— God hear you and save me!

Aramis resumed his strange smile as was his wont.

— God always hears me, I, said he; that perhaps depends on my praying Him very loud.

— I abandon myself to you without reserve, murmured Fouquet.

— Oh! I do not understand it thus. It is I who am yours without reserve. Also, you who are the most subtle, the most delicate, and the most ingenious mind, you shall order the whole fête down to the least detail. Only...

— Only? said Fouquet, like a man accustomed to feel the worth of parentheses.

— Well! leaving you all the invention of detail, I reserve to myself the supervision of the execution.

— How so?

— I mean that you shall make of me, for that day, a majordomo, a superior intendant, a sort of factotum, who shall partake of the captain of the guards and of the steward; I shall make the people move, and I shall have the keys of the doors; you will give your orders, it is true, but it is to me that you will give them; they shall pass through my mouth to arrive at their destination, you understand?

— No, I do not understand.

— But you accept?

— Pardieu! yes, my friend.

— That is all we need. Thanks then, and make your list of invitations.

— And whom shall I invite?

— Everybody!

Chapter CLXXXIX — Wherein it seems to the author that it is time to return to the Vicomte de Bragelonne

Our readers have seen, in this history, the adventures of the new generation and those of the generation past unfold in parallel.

To the ones, the reflection of the glory of former days, the experience of the painful things of this world. To those others also the peace which invades the heart, and permits the blood to fall asleep around the scars which were cruel wounds.

To the others, the combats of self-love and of love, the bitter sorrows and the ineffable joys: life instead of memory.

If some variety has arisen before the reader's eyes in the episodes of this tale, the cause lies in the fertile nuances which spring from this double palette, where two pictures go side by side, mingling and harmonising their severe tone and their joyful tone.

The repose of the emotions of the one is found there in the midst of the emotions of the other. After having reasoned with the old, one loves to rave with the young.

Also, were the threads of this history not powerfully to attach the chapter we are writing to that which we have just written, we should take no more trouble over it than Ruysdael took to paint an autumn sky after having finished a spring.

We invite the reader to do the same, and to take up Raoul de Bragelonne at the point where our last sketch had left him.

Drunk, terrified, desolate, or rather without reason, without will, without preconceived design, he fled after the scene the end of which he had witnessed at La Vallière's. The king, Montalais, Louise, that chamber, that strange exclusion, that grief of Louise, that fright of Montalais, that wrath of the king, all foretold him a misfortune. But which?

Arrived from London because he was announced a danger, he found at the first stroke the appearance of that danger. Was not that enough for a lover? yes, certainly; but it was not enough for a noble heart, proud to expose itself upon a straightness equal to its own.

However, Raoul did not seek explanations where jealous or less timid lovers go at once to seek them. He did not go to say to his mistress: "Louise, do you no longer love me? Louise, do you love another?" A man full of courage, full of friendship as he was full of love, religious observer of his word, and believer in the word of others, Raoul said to himself: "De Guiche wrote to warn me; De Guiche knows something; I am going to go ask De Guiche what he knows, and tell him what I have seen."

The way was not long. De Guiche, brought from Fontainebleau to Paris since two days, was beginning to recover from his wound and was taking a few steps in his chamber.

He uttered a cry of joy at seeing Raoul enter with his fury of friendship.

Raoul uttered a cry of pain at seeing De Guiche so pale, so wasted, so sad. Two words and the gesture which the wounded man made to push aside Raoul's arm sufficed the latter to teach him the truth.

— Ah! so it is! said Raoul, sitting down beside his friend, one loves and one dies.

— No, no, one does not die, replied De Guiche smiling, since I am standing, since I press you in my arms.

— Ah! I understand myself.

— And I understand you too. You persuade yourself that I am unhappy, Raoul.

— Alas!

— No. I am the happiest of men! I suffer with my body, but not with my heart, with my soul. If you knew!... Oh! I am the happiest of men!

— Oh! so much the better! answered Raoul; so much the better, provided it lasts.

— It is finished; I have it until death, Raoul.

— You, I do not doubt it; but she...

“Stories of the world, in your language.”