Part 15

— See there! I, who am no financier, had only glimpsed an idea within your idea.

— Which one, sir?

— That of giving Mr. Fouquet a little heartburn, he who is wearing himself out over there, upon his towers, awaiting us.

The blow was just and harsh. Colbert was thrown off balance by it. He withdrew, ear lowered. Fortunately, the speech was at an end. The king drank, then everyone resumed the march through the city. The king gnawed at his lips, for night was falling and all hope of a stroll with La Vallière was vanishing.

To bring the king's household into Vaux required at least four hours, thanks to all the formal orders. Thus the king, boiling with impatience, pressed the reins to arrive before nightfall, but at the moment of setting out again, difficulties arose.

— Is the king not to sleep at Melun? said Mr. Colbert, softly, to d'Artagnan.

Mr. Colbert was ill-inspired that day, to address himself thus to the captain of the musketeers. The latter had guessed that the king could not sit still. D'Artagnan wished to let him enter Vaux only well accompanied: he therefore desired that His Majesty enter only with the whole escort. On the other hand, he felt that delays would irritate that impatient temper. How to reconcile these two difficulties? D'Artagnan took Colbert at his word and launched him at the king.

— Sire, he said, Mr. Colbert asks whether Your Majesty will not sleep at Melun?

— Sleep at Melun! And what for? cried Louis XIV. Sleep at Melun! Who the devil could have thought of that, when Mr. Fouquet awaits us this evening?

— It was, Colbert replied quickly, the fear of delaying Your Majesty, who, by etiquette, cannot enter anywhere but his own quarters before the lodgings have been marked by his harbinger, and the garrison distributed.

D'Artagnan listened with his ears, biting his moustache.

The queens heard also. They were tired; they would have liked to sleep, and above all to prevent the king from walking, in the evening, with Mr. de Saint-Aignan and the ladies; for, if etiquette confined the princesses to their rooms, the ladies, their service done, had full liberty to walk.

One sees that all these interests, piling up in vapors, were bound to produce clouds, and the clouds a storm. The king had no moustache to bite: he avidly chewed the handle of his whip. How to get out of this? D'Artagnan made sheep's eyes and Colbert a hunched back. Upon whom to bite?

— We shall consult the queen on this, said Louis XIV, bowing to the ladies.

And the graciousness he showed penetrated the heart of Marie-Thérèse, who was good and generous, and who, left to her own free will, replied respectfully:

— I shall do the king's will, always with pleasure.

— How long to reach Vaux? asked Anne of Austria, dragging on each syllable, and pressing her hand to her aching breast.

— An hour for the carriages of Their Majesties, said d'Artagnan, by fairly fine roads.

The king looked at him.

— A quarter of an hour for the king, he hastened to add.

— We should arrive by daylight, said Louis XIV.

— But the lodgings of the military household, Colbert objected softly, will cost the king all the haste of the journey, however swift it be.

'Double brute!' thought d'Artagnan, 'if I had an interest in demolishing your credit, I should do it in ten minutes.'

— In the king's place, he added aloud, returning to Mr. Fouquet, who is a gentleman, I would leave my household, I would go as a friend; I would enter alone with my captain of the guard; I should be the greater and the more sacred for it.

Joy shone in the king's eyes.

— There is good counsel, he said, ladies; let us go to a friend, as friends. Walk slowly, gentlemen of the equipages; and we, gentlemen, forward!

He drew all the horsemen behind him.

Colbert hid his scowling heavy head behind his horse's neck.

— I shall be quit of it, said d'Artagnan as he galloped, by talking, this very evening, with Aramis. And then Mr. Fouquet is a gentleman, 'sblood! I said it, it must be believed.

Thus it was that, toward seven in the evening, without trumpets and without advance guards, without scouts or musketeers, the king presented himself before the gate of Vaux, where Fouquet, forewarned, had been waiting for half an hour, bareheaded, in the midst of his household and friends.

Chapter CCXIX — Nectar and Ambrosia

Mr. Fouquet held the stirrup for the king, who, having dismounted, rose gracefully, and, yet more gracefully, offered a hand which Fouquet, despite a slight effort of the king, respectfully bore to his lips.

The king wished to await, in the outer court, the arrival of the carriages. He did not wait long. The roads had been beaten by order of the superintendent. One would not have found, from Melun to Vaux, a stone as large as an egg. Thus the carriages, rolling as upon a carpet, brought all the ladies, without jolts or fatigue, at eight o'clock. They were received by Madame the superintendent, and at the moment they appeared, a bright light, like that of day, sprang from all the trees, from all the vases of all the marbles. This enchantment lasted until Their Majesties had lost themselves in the interior of the palace.

All these marvels, which the chronicler has heaped up or rather preserved in his account, at the risk of rivaling the novelist, these splendors of vanquished night, of corrected nature, of all pleasures, of all luxuries combined for the satisfaction of the senses and the mind, Fouquet truly offered to his king, in that enchanted retreat of which no sovereign in Europe could boast the equal.

We shall speak neither of the great feast that united Their Majesties, nor of the concerts, nor of the fairylike transformations; we shall content ourselves with painting the face of the king, which, from gay, open, from blessed as he had been at first, soon became somber, constrained, irritated. He recalled his own household, and that poor luxury which was but the utensil of royalty without being the property of the man-king. The great vases of the Louvre, the old furnishings and the plate of Henri II, of François I, of Louis XI, were but historical monuments. They were but objects of art, a castoff of the royal trade. With Fouquet, the value lay in the work as in the material. Fouquet ate from a gold that artists of his own had melted and chiseled for him. Fouquet drank wines whose name the King of France did not know: he drank them from cups each more precious than the whole royal cellar.

What to say of the halls, the hangings, the paintings, the servants, the officers of every sort? What to say of the service where, order replacing etiquette, well-being replacing formal orders, the pleasure and satisfaction of the guest became the supreme law of all that obeyed the host?

That swarm of busy folk without noise, that multitude of guests less numerous than the servants, those myriads of dishes, of vessels of gold and silver, those floods of light, those heaps of unknown flowers, whose greenhouses had stripped themselves as of a burden, since they were still redundant with beauty, that harmonious whole, which was but the prelude of the promised festival, ravished all the assistants, who testified their admiration several times, not by voice or gesture, but by silence and attention, those two languages of the courtier who knows no longer the master's rein.

As for the king, his eyes swelled: he dared no longer look at the queen. Anne of Austria, always superior in pride to any creature, crushed her host by the contempt she showed for all that was served her.

The young queen, good and curious of life, praised Fouquet, ate with great appetite, and asked the name of several fruits that appeared upon the table. Fouquet replied that he ignored the names. These fruits came from his reserves: he had often cultivated them himself, being a scholar in matters of exotic agronomy. The king felt the delicacy. He was only the more humiliated. He found the queen a bit common, and Anne of Austria a bit Juno. All his care, for his part, was to keep himself cold upon the limit of extreme disdain or simple admiration.

But Fouquet had foreseen all this: he was one of those men who foresee everything.

The king had expressly declared that, as long as he should be at Mr. Fouquet's, he desired not to subject his meals to etiquette, and, consequently, to dine with everyone; but, by the care of the superintendent, the king's dinner was found served apart, if one may so express it, in the midst of the general table. This dinner, marvelous in its composition, comprised all that the king loved, all that he usually chose. Louis had no excuse, he, the first appetite of his kingdom, to say he was not hungry.

Mr. Fouquet did better still: he had seated himself at table to obey the king's order, but as soon as the soups were served, he rose from table and set himself to serving the king, while Madame the superintendent stood behind the chair of the queen mother. The disdain of Juno and the sulks of Jupiter held not against this excess of graciousness. The queen mother ate a biscuit in San Lucar wine, and the king ate of everything, saying to Mr. Fouquet:

— It is impossible, Mr. Superintendent, to fare better.

Whereupon the whole Court set to devouring with such enthusiasm that one would have said swarms of Egyptian locusts descending upon the green rye.

This did not prevent that, after hunger was satisfied, the king became sad again: sad in proportion to the good humor he had thought fit to manifest, sad above all at the good countenance his courtiers had made toward Fouquet.

D'Artagnan, who ate much and drank dry, without it showing, lost not a tooth's stroke, but made a great number of observations that profited him.

Supper ended, the king would not lose the walk. The park was illuminated. The moon, moreover, as if she had placed herself at the orders of the lord of Vaux, silvered the thickets and the lakes with her diamonds and her phosphorus. The coolness was gentle. The walks were shady and sanded so softly that the feet took pleasure there. There was complete festival; for the king, finding La Vallière at the turn of a wood, could press her hand and say: 'I love you,' without any hearing, except Mr. d'Artagnan, who followed, and Mr. Fouquet, who preceded.

This night of enchantments advanced. The king asked for his chamber. Immediately all was in motion. The queens passed to their rooms to the sound of theorbos and flutes. The king, on ascending, found his musketeers, whom Mr. Fouquet had had come from Melun and invited to supper.

D'Artagnan lost all distrust. He was weary, he had supped well, and wished, once in his life, to enjoy a festival at the house of a true king.

— Mr. Fouquet, he said, is my man.

They conducted, with great ceremony, the king into the chamber of Morpheus, of which we owe a slight mention to our readers. It was the finest and most vast of the palace. Le Brun had painted, in the cupola, the happy dreams and the sad dreams that Morpheus sends to kings as to men. All that sleep engenders of gracious, that it pours of honey and perfumes, of flowers and nectar, of voluptuousness or of rest into the senses, the painter had enriched the frescoes with. It was a composition as suave in one part as sinister and terrible in the other. The cups that pour poisons, the steel that glitters above the sleeper's head, the sorcerers and phantoms with hideous masks, the half-darkness, more frightful than flame or deep night, behold what he had given as pendants to his graceful paintings.

The king, entered into that magnificent chamber, was seized with a shiver. Fouquet asked the cause.

— I am sleepy, replied Louis, rather pale.

— Does Your Majesty wish his service at once?

— No, I have to speak with certain persons, said the king. Let Mr. Colbert be warned.

Fouquet bowed and withdrew.

Chapter CCXX — To a Gascon, a Gascon and a Half

D'Artagnan had lost no time; it was not in his habits. After informing himself of Aramis, he had run until he met him. Now, Aramis, once the king had entered Vaux, had withdrawn to his chamber, meditating no doubt still some gallantry for the pleasures of His Majesty.

D'Artagnan had himself announced and found on the second floor, in a fine chamber called the blue chamber, because of its hangings, he found, we say, the bishop of Vannes in company with Porthos and several modern epicureans.

Aramis came to embrace his friend, offered him the best seat, and as it was generally seen that the musketeer no doubt held himself apart in order to speak secretly with Aramis, the epicureans took their leave.

Porthos did not budge. It is true that, having dined much, he slept in his armchair. The conversation was not hampered by this third. Porthos had a harmonious snore, and one could speak upon that sort of bass as upon an ancient melopoeia.

D'Artagnan felt that it fell to him to open the conversation. The engagement he had come to seek was rough; thus he broached the subject plainly.

— Well! here we are at Vaux, then? said he.

— But yes, d'Artagnan. Do you like this abode?

— Much, and I like Mr. Fouquet too.

— Is he not charming?

— One could not say more.

— They say the king began by giving him the cold shoulder, and that His Majesty softened?

— You did not see, then, that you say: 'They say'?

— No; I was occupied, with those gentlemen who have just left, with the representation and the carousel of tomorrow.

— Ah! you are master of the revels here, are you?

— I am, as you know, a friend of the pleasures of the imagination: I have always been a poet in some corner, I.

— I recall your verses. They were charming.

— I, I have forgotten them, but I rejoice to learn those of others, when the others are called Molière, Pélisson, La Fontaine, etc.

— Do you know the idea that came to me this evening at supper, Aramis?

— No. Tell it me; otherwise I should not guess it; you have so many!

— Well! the idea came to me that the true King of France is not Louis XIV.

— Eh! said Aramis, involuntarily bringing his eyes back to the musketeer's eyes.

— No, it is Mr. Fouquet.

Aramis breathed and smiled.

— You are like the others: jealous! said he. I wager it is Mr. Colbert who put that phrase in your mouth?

D'Artagnan, to sweeten Aramis, told him the misadventures of Colbert concerning the wine of Melun.

— Ugly race, this Colbert! said Aramis.

— Faith, yes!

— When one thinks, added the bishop, that that knave will be your minister in four months.

— Bah!

— And that you will serve him as Richelieu, as Mazarin.

— As you serve Fouquet, said d'Artagnan.

— With this difference, dear friend, that Mr. Fouquet is not Mr. Colbert.

— That is true.

And d'Artagnan feigned to grow sad.

— But, he added a moment after, why then did you tell me that Mr. Colbert will be minister in four months?

— Because Mr. Fouquet will be no longer, replied Aramis.

— He will be ruined, will he not? said d'Artagnan.

— Flat.

— Why give festivals, then? said the musketeer in a tone of benevolence so natural that the bishop was for a moment its dupe. How did you not dissuade him from it, you?

This last part of the phrase was an excess. Aramis returned to distrust.

— It is a matter, said he, of managing the king.

— By ruining oneself?

— By ruining oneself for him, yes.

— Singular calculation!

— Necessity.

— I do not see it, dear Aramis.

— Indeed you note well the nascent antagonism of Mr. de Colbert.

— And that Mr. Colbert pushes the king to rid himself of the superintendent.

— That jumps to the eyes.

— And that there is a cabal against Mr. Fouquet.

— It is known enough.

— What likelihood that the king joins the party against a man who will have spent all to please him?

— That is true, said Aramis slowly, little convinced, and curious to approach another face of the subject of conversation.

— There are follies and follies, resumed d'Artagnan. I do not like all those you commit.

— Which?

— The supper, the ball, the concert, the comedy, the carousels, the cascades, the bonfires and fireworks, the illuminations and the gifts, very well, I grant you that; but did not these circumstantial expenses suffice? Was it needful...

— What?

— Was it needful, for example, to clothe an entire household anew?

— Oh! that is true! I said that to Mr. Fouquet; he answered me that, if he were rich enough, he would offer the king a new château from the weathervanes to the cellars, new with all that is within, and that, the king gone, he would burn it all so that nothing should serve others.

— That is pure Spanish!

— I told him so. He added this: 'My enemy be whoever counsels me to spare.'

— That is madness, I tell you, as is that portrait.

— What portrait? said Aramis.

— That of the king, that surprise...

— That surprise?

— Yes, for which you took samples at Percerin's.

D'Artagnan stopped. He had launched the arrow. It remained only to measure its range.

— It is a courtesy, replied Aramis.

D'Artagnan came straight to his friend, took his two hands, and, looking him in the eyes:

— Aramis, said he, do you still love me a little?

— If I love you!

— Good! A service, then. Why did you take samples of the king's habit at Percerin's?

— Come with me to ask that of poor Le Brun, who worked on it two days and two nights.

— Aramis, that is the truth for everyone, but for me...

— In truth, d'Artagnan, you surprise me!

— Be good to me. Tell me the truth: you would not wish some disagreeable thing to befall me, would you?

— Dear friend, you become incomprehensible. What devil of a suspicion have you, then?

— Do you believe in my instincts? You used to. Well! an instinct tells me you have a hidden project.

— I, a project?

— I am not sure of it.

— Pardieu!

— I am not sure of it, but I would swear it.

— Well! d'Artagnan, you cause me lively pain. Indeed, if I have a project that I must hide from you, I would hide it from you, would I not? If I have one that I must reveal to you, I would already have told you.

— No, Aramis, no, there are projects that reveal themselves only at the favorable moment.

— Then, my good friend, resumed the bishop laughing, it is that the favorable moment is not yet arrived.

D'Artagnan shook his head with melancholy.

— Friendship! friendship! said he, vain name! Here is a man who, if I asked it of him, would have himself chopped to pieces for me.

— That is true, said Aramis nobly.

— And this man, who would give me all the blood of his veins, will not open me a little corner of his heart. Friendship, I repeat, you are but a shadow and a lure, like all that shines in the world!

— Speak not thus of our friendship, replied the bishop in a firm and convinced tone. It is not of the kind you speak of.

— Look at us, Aramis. Here we are three of four. You deceive me, I suspect you, and Porthos sleeps. Fine trio of friends, is it not? fine remnant!

— I can tell you but one thing, d'Artagnan, and I affirm it to you on the gospel. I love you as of old. If ever I distrust you, it is because of others, not because of you or me. Every thing I shall do and wherein I succeed, you shall find your share. Promise me the same favor, say!

— If I am not mistaken, Aramis, those are words which, at the moment you utter them, are full of generosity.

— That is possible.

— You conspire against Mr. Colbert. If it is only that, 'sblood! tell me then, I have the tool, I shall pull the tooth.

Aramis could not erase a smile of disdain, which glided over his noble face.

— And, if I were conspiring against Mr. Colbert, where would be the harm?

— It is too little for you, and it is not to overthrow Colbert that you went to ask samples at Percerin's. Oh! Aramis, we are not enemies, we are brothers. Tell me what you want to undertake, and, faith of d'Artagnan, if I cannot help you, I swear to remain neutral.

— I undertake nothing, said Aramis.

— Aramis, a voice speaks to me, it enlightens me; that voice has never deceived me. You aim at the king!

— At the king? cried the bishop, affecting displeasure.

— Your physiognomy will not convince me. At the king, I repeat.

— You would help me? said Aramis, still with the irony of his laugh.

— Aramis, I shall do more than help you, more than remain neutral, I shall save you.

— You are mad, d'Artagnan.

— I am the wiser of us two.

— You, suspect me of wishing to assassinate the king!

— Who speaks of that? said the musketeer.

— Then, let us understand, I see not what one can do to a legitimate king like ours, if one does not assassinate him.

D'Artagnan replied nothing.

— You have, besides, your guards and your musketeers here, said the bishop.

— That is true.

— You are not at Mr. Fouquet's, you are at your own.

— That is true.

— You have, at this hour, Mr. Colbert who advises the king against Mr. Fouquet all that you would perhaps advise if I were not of the party.

— Aramis! Aramis! for mercy, a word of a friend!

— The word of friends is the truth. If I think to lay a finger on the son of Anne of Austria, the true king of this land of France, if I have not the firm intention to prostrate myself before his throne, if, in my ideas, the day of tomorrow, here, at Vaux, is not to be the most glorious of the days of my king, may thunder crush me! I consent to it.

Aramis had pronounced these words with his face turned toward the alcove of his chamber, where d'Artagnan, moreover leaning against that alcove, could not suspect that someone hid there. The unction of these words, their studied slowness, the solemnity of the oath, gave the musketeer the most complete satisfaction. He took Aramis's two hands and pressed them cordially.

Aramis had borne the reproaches without paling; he reddened in listening to the praises. D'Artagnan deceived did him honor. D'Artagnan trusting shamed him.

— Are you leaving? he said to him, embracing him to hide his reddening.

— Yes, my service calls me. I have the word of the night to take.

— Where will you sleep?

— In the king's antechamber, it appears. But Porthos?

— Take him along with you, then; for he snores like a cannon.

— Ah!... he does not lodge with you? said d'Artagnan.

— Not in the least. He has his apartment I know not where.

— Very well! said the musketeer, to whom this separation of the two associates removed his last suspicions.

And he roughly touched Porthos's shoulder. The latter answered by roaring.

— Come! said d'Artagnan.

— Why! d'Artagnan, the dear friend! by what chance? Ah! it is true, I am of the festival of Vaux.

— With your fine habit.

— It is kind of Mr. Coquelin de Volière, is it not?

“Stories of the world, in your language.”