Part 16
— Hush! said Aramis, you are about to break through the parquet floors.
— That is true, said the musketeer. This room is above the dome.
— And I did not take it for an armory, added the bishop. The king's chamber has for its ceiling the sweetness of sleep. Do not forget that my parquet is the lining of that ceiling. Good night, my friends; in ten minutes I shall be asleep.
And Aramis led them off with a soft laugh. Then, when they were outside, rapidly bolting the doors and sealing the windows, he called:
— My lord! my lord!
Philippe emerged from the alcove by pushing a sliding door placed behind the bed.
— There are many suspicions in M. d'Artagnan, he said.
— Ah! you recognized d'Artagnan, did you not?
— Before you had named him.
— He is your captain of the musketeers.
— He is very devoted to me, replied Philippe, emphasizing the personal pronoun.
— Faithful as a dog, though he bites sometimes. If d'Artagnan does not recognize you before the other has disappeared, count on d'Artagnan for all eternity; for then, if he has seen nothing, he will keep his loyalty. If he has seen too late, he is a Gascon and will never admit he was mistaken.
— I thought as much. What do we do now?
— You are going to station yourself at the observatory and watch, at the king's retiring, how you retire in little ceremony.
— Very well. Where shall I place myself?
— Sit on this folding stool. I am going to slide the parquet open. You will look through this opening which corresponds to the false windows made in the dome of the king's chamber. Do you see?
— I see the king.
And Philippe trembled as at the sight of an enemy.
— What is he doing?
— He wants to have a man sit beside him.
— M. Fouquet.
— No, no; wait...
— The notes, my prince, the portraits!
— The man the king wants to have sit thus before him is M. Colbert.
— Colbert before the king? cried Aramis. Impossible!
— Look.
Aramis plunged his gaze into the crack of the parquet.
— Yes, he said, Colbert himself. Oh! my lord, what shall we hear, and what will come of this intimacy?
— Nothing good for M. Fouquet, without a doubt.
The prince was not mistaken. We have seen that Louis XIV had sent for Colbert, and that Colbert had arrived. The conversation had begun between them with one of the highest favors the king had ever granted. It is true that the king was alone with his subject.
— Colbert, sit down.
The intendant, overwhelmed with joy—he who had feared being dismissed—refused this signal honor.
— Does he accept? said Aramis.
— No, he remains standing.
— Let us listen, my prince.
And the future king, the future pope, listened avidly to these simple mortals whom they held beneath their feet, ready to crush them had they wished.
— Colbert, said the king, you greatly vexed me today.
— Sire... I knew it.
— Very well! I like that answer. Yes, you knew it. There is courage in having done it.
— I risked displeasing Your Majesty, but I also risked hiding from you your true interest.
— What? You feared something for me?
— Were it only an indigestion, Sire, said Colbert, for one gives one's king feasts like that only to smother him beneath the weight of good cheer.
And, having launched this coarse jest, Colbert pleasantly awaited its effect.
Louis XIV, the vainest and most delicate man in his kingdom, pardoned Colbert this pleasantry as well.
— Truly, he said, M. Fouquet gave me too fine a meal. Tell me, Colbert, where does he get all the money necessary to meet these enormous expenses? Do you know?
— Yes, I know, Sire.
— You shall lay it out for me a little.
— Easily, to the last penny.
— I know you count accurately.
— It is the first quality one could require of an intendant of finances.
— Not all have it.
— I thank Your Majesty for so flattering a compliment from his lips.
— Therefore, M. Fouquet is rich, very rich, and that, sir, everyone knows.
— Everyone, the living as well as the dead.
— What does that mean, M. Colbert?
— The living see M. Fouquet's wealth. They admire a result, and they applaud it; but the dead, wiser than we, know the causes, and they accuse.
— Well! To what causes does M. Fouquet owe his riches?
— The office of intendant often favors those who exercise it.
— You have something more confidential to tell me; fear nothing, we are quite alone.
— I never fear anything, under the aegis of my conscience and under the protection of my king, Sire.
And Colbert bowed.
— Therefore, the dead, if they spoke?...
— They sometimes speak, Sire. Read.
— Ah! murmured Aramis into the ear of the prince, who at his side listened without missing a syllable, since you are placed here, my lord, to learn your trade as king, listen to a thoroughly royal infamy. You are about to witness one of those scenes as God alone—or rather as the devil—conceives and executes them. Listen well, you will profit by it.
The prince redoubled his attention and saw Louis XIV take from Colbert's hands a letter that he held out.
— The late cardinal's handwriting! said the king.
— Your Majesty has a good memory, replied Colbert with a bow, and it is a marvelous aptitude in a king destined for work, to recognize handwritings at first sight thus.
The king read a letter of Mazarin's which, already known to the reader since the quarrel between Mme de Chevreuse and Aramis, would teach nothing new if we reported it here.
— I do not understand well, said the king, deeply interested.
— Your Majesty is not yet accustomed to the clerks of the intendancy.
— I see it concerns money given to M. Fouquet.
— Thirteen millions. A pretty sum!
— But yes... Well! those thirteen millions are missing from the total of the accounts? That is what I do not understand very well, I tell you. Why and how would this deficit be possible?
— Possible, I do not say; real, I say it.
— You say that thirteen millions are missing from the accounts?
— It is not I who say it, it is the register.
— And this letter of M. de Mazarin indicates the use of that sum and the name of the depositary?
— As Your Majesty may convince yourself.
— Yes, indeed, it results from this that M. Fouquet would not yet have returned the thirteen millions.
— That results from the accounts, yes, Sire.
— Well! then?...
— Well! then, Sire, since M. Fouquet has not returned the thirteen millions, it is that he pocketed them, and, with thirteen millions, one makes four times more, and a fraction, of expense and munificence than Your Majesty could at Fontainebleau, where we spent but three millions in total, if you recall.
It was, for a clumsy man, a very adroit piece of malice, this invoked memory of the fete in which the king, thanks to a word from Fouquet, had for the first time perceived his own inferiority. Colbert received at Vaux what Fouquet had done to him at Fontainebleau, and, being a good man of finance, he returned it with all interest. Having thus disposed the king, Colbert had little left to do. He felt it; the king had become gloomy. Colbert awaited the king's first word with as much impatience as Philippe and Aramis from their observatory above.
— Do you know what results from all this, M. Colbert? said the king after a reflection.
— No, Sire, I do not know.
— It is that the fact of the appropriation of the thirteen millions, if it were proven...
— But it is.
— I mean if it were declared, M. Colbert.
— I think it would be tomorrow, if Your Majesty...
— Were not at M. Fouquet's, replied the king with some dignity.
— The king is everywhere at home, Sire, and above all in houses his money has paid for.
— It seems to me, said Philippe low to Aramis, that the architect who built this dome, foreseeing what use would be made of it, should have furnished it so that it could be made to fall on the heads of knaves of as black a character as this M. Colbert.
— I was thinking just that, said Aramis, but M. Colbert is so close to the king at this moment!
— That is true, that would open a succession.
— Of which your younger brother would reap all the fruit, my lord. Come, let us stay quiet and continue to listen.
— We shall not listen long, said the young prince.
— Why is that, my lord?
— Because, if I were the king, I would answer nothing more.
— And what would you do?
— I would wait until tomorrow morning to reflect.
Louis XIV at last raised his eyes, and, finding Colbert attentive to his first word:
— M. Colbert, he said, abruptly changing the conversation, I see it is getting late, I shall retire.
— Ah! said Colbert, I shall have...
— Until tomorrow. Tomorrow morning, I shall have reached a decision.
— Very well, Sire, replied Colbert, outraged, though he contained himself in the king's presence.
The king made a gesture, and the intendant moved toward the door walking backward.
— My service! cried the king.
The king's service entered the apartment.
Philippe was about to leave his observation post.
— One moment, said Aramis to him with his habitual gentleness; what has just passed is but a detail, and we shall trouble ourselves with it no more tomorrow, but the night service, the etiquette of the little retiring—ah! my lord, that is important! Learn, learn how you get into bed, Sire. Look, look!
Chapter CCXXI — Colbert
History will tell us, or rather history has told us, the events of the following day, the splendid fêtes given by the superintendent to his king. Two great writers have recorded the great dispute that arose between the Cascade and the Sheaf of Water, the struggle engaged between the Fountain of the Crown and the Animals, to see which should please the more. There was therefore, the next day, diversion and joy; there was walking, dining, comedy; comedy in which, to his great surprise, Porthos recognized M. Coquelin de Volière, playing in the farce of the Fâcheux. Thus did M. de Bracieux de Pierrefonds call this entertainment.
La Fontaine did not judge so, no doubt, he who wrote to his friend M. Maucrou:
_It is a work of Molière._ _This writer, by his manner,_ _Charms at present all the Court._ _By the way his name runs,_ _He must be beyond Rome._ _I am delighted, for he is a man._
One sees that La Fontaine had profited by Pélisson's advice and had tended to his rhyme.
For the rest, Porthos was of La Fontaine's opinion, and he would have said like him: "By God! this Molière is my man! but only for the clothes." As for the theatre, we have said, for M. de Bracieux de Pierrefonds, Molière was but a farceur.
But preoccupied by the scene of the eve, but digesting the poison poured by Colbert, the king, during that whole brilliant, eventful, unforeseen day, where all the marvels of the Thousand and One Nights seemed to spring beneath his steps, the king showed himself cold, reserved, taciturn. Nothing could cheer him; one felt that a deep resentment, coming from afar, increased little by little like the source that becomes a river, thanks to the thousand trickling streams that feed it, trembled in the depths of his soul. Only toward noon did he begin to recover some serenity. No doubt his resolution was fixed.
Aramis, who followed him step by step, in thought as in gait, Aramis concluded that the event he awaited would not be long in coming.
This time, Colbert seemed to march in concert with the bishop of Vannes, and, had he received for each needle with which he pricked the king's heart a signal from Aramis, he could not have done better.
All that day, the king, who no doubt needed to dispel a dark thought, the king appeared to seek as actively the society of La Vallière as he put eagerness into fleeing that of M. Colbert or that of M. Fouquet.
Evening came. The king had wished to walk only after play. Between supper and the walk, they therefore played. The king won a thousand pistoles, and, having won them, put them in his pocket, and rose saying:
— Come, gentlemen, to the park.
He found the ladies there. The king had won a thousand pistoles and pocketed them, as we have said. But M. Fouquet had managed to lose ten thousand; so that, among the courtiers, there was still a hundred and ninety thousand livres of profit, a circumstance which made the faces of the courtiers and officers of the king's household the merriest faces on earth.
It was not so with the face of the king, on which, despite this gain to which he was not insensitive, there still remained a shred of cloud. At the corner of an alley, Colbert awaited him. No doubt the intendant was there by virtue of an appointed meeting, for Louis XIV, who had avoided him, made him a sign and withdrew with him into the park.
But La Vallière also had seen that dark brow and flaming gaze of the king; she had seen it, and as nothing brooding in that soul was impenetrable to her love, she had understood that this compressed anger threatened someone. She stationed herself on the path of vengeance like an angel of mercy.
All sad, all confused, half mad at having been so long separated from her lover, anxious at this inward emotion she had divined, she first showed herself to the king with an embarrassed aspect which, in his ill disposition of mind, the king interpreted unfavorably.
Then, as they were alone or nearly so, seeing that Colbert, on perceiving the young girl, had respectfully stopped and stood ten paces off, the king approached La Vallière and took her hand.
— Mademoiselle, he said to her, may I, without indiscretion, ask you what ails you? Your breast seems swollen, your eyes are moist.
— Oh! Sire, if my breast is swollen, if my eyes are moist, if I am sad finally, it is from the sadness of Your Majesty.
— My sadness? oh! you see ill, mademoiselle. No, it is not sadness that I feel.
— And what do you feel, Sire?
— Humiliation.
— Humiliation? oh! what are you saying?
— I say, mademoiselle, that, where I am, no other should be master. Well! look, if I do not fade away, I, the king of France, before the king of this domain. Oh! he continued, grinding his teeth and his fist, oh!... And when I think that this king...
— After? said La Vallière, frightened.
— That this king is an unfaithful servant who grows proud with my stolen goods! So I am going to change, for that impudent minister, his fete into mourning whose nymph of Vaux, as his poets say, will long keep the memory.
— Oh! Your Majesty...
— Well! mademoiselle, are you going to take M. Fouquet's part? said Louis XIV with impatience.
— No, Sire, I shall only ask you if you are well informed. Your Majesty, more than once, has learned to know the worth of court accusations.
Louis XIV made a sign to Colbert to approach.
— Speak, M. Colbert, said the young prince; for, in truth, I believe here is Mlle de La Vallière who needs your word to believe the king's word. Tell Mademoiselle what M. Fouquet has done. And you, mademoiselle, oh! it will not be long, have the goodness to listen, I pray you.
Why did Louis XIV insist thus? A very simple thing: his heart was not at peace, his mind was not well convinced; he divined some dark, obscure, tortuous plot, beneath this story of the thirteen millions, and he would have liked the pure heart of La Vallière, revolted at the idea of a theft, to approve, with a single word, this resolution he had taken, and which nevertheless he hesitated to execute.
— Speak, sir, said La Vallière to Colbert, who had advanced; speak, since the king wishes me to hear you. Come, say, what is M. Fouquet's crime?
— Oh! not very grave, mademoiselle, said the dark personage; a simple breach of trust...
— Say, say, Colbert, and when you have said, leave us and go warn M. d'Artagnan that I have orders to give him.
— M. d'Artagnan! cried La Vallière, and why send for M. d'Artagnan, Sire? I beseech you to tell me.
— Why, to arrest this proud titan who, faithful to his device, threatens to scale my heaven.
— Arrest M. Fouquet, do you say?
— Ah! that surprises you?
— In his own house?
— Why not? If he is guilty, he is guilty at home as elsewhere.
— M. Fouquet, who is ruining himself at this moment to do honor to his king?
— I believe, in truth, that you defend this traitor, mademoiselle.
Colbert began to laugh softly. The king turned at the hiss of that laugh.
— Sire, said La Vallière, it is not M. Fouquet I defend, it is you yourself.
— Myself!... You defend me?
— Sire, you dishonor yourself in giving such an order.
— Dishonor myself? murmured the king, paling with anger. In truth, mademoiselle, you put a strange passion into what you say.
— I put passion, not into what I say, Sire, but into serving Your Majesty, replied the noble young girl. I would put, if need be, my life into it, and with the same passion, Sire.
Colbert would have grumbled. Then La Vallière, that gentle lamb, reared up against him and, with a flaming eye, imposed silence on him.
— Sir, she said, when the king acts well, if the king wrongs me or mine, I am silent; but, though the king served me, or those I love, if the king acts ill, I tell him so.
— But, it seems to me, mademoiselle, ventured Colbert, that I too love the king.
— Yes, sir, we both love him, each in her way, replied La Vallière with such an accent that the young king's heart was penetrated by it. Only I love him, I, so strongly that everyone knows it, so purely that the king himself doubts not my love. He is my king and my master, I am his humble servant, but whoever touches his honor touches my life. Now, I repeat that those dishonor the king who counsel him to have M. Fouquet arrested in his own house.
Colbert lowered his head, for he felt abandoned by the king. However, even as he lowered his head, he murmured:
— Mademoiselle, I should have but one word to say.
— Do not say that word, sir, for that word, I would not heed it. What would you say to me besides? That M. Fouquet has committed crimes? I know it, because the king has said so, and from the moment the king has said: "I believe," I need no other mouth to say: "I affirm." But M. Fouquet, were he the lowest of men, I say it aloud, M. Fouquet is sacred to the king, because the king is his guest. Were his house a den, were Vaux a cavern of counterfeiters or bandits, his house is holy, his château inviolable, since he lodges his wife there, and it is a place of asylum that executioners would not violate!
La Vallière fell silent. In spite of himself, the king admired her; he was vanquished by the warmth of that voice, by the nobleness of that cause. Colbert, he, bent, crushed by the unequalness of that struggle. At last, the king breathed, shook his head and held out his hand to La Vallière.
— Mademoiselle, he said with gentleness, why do you speak against me? Do you know what this wretch will do if I let him breathe?
— Eh! my God, is he not a prey that will always belong to you?
— And if he escapes, if he flees? cried Colbert.
— Well! sir, it will be the eternal glory of the king to have let M. Fouquet flee, and the more guilty he shall have been, the greater the king's glory, compared to that misery, to that shame.
Louis kissed La Vallière's hand, even as he let himself slide to his knees.
"I am lost," thought Colbert.
Then suddenly his face lit up:
"Oh! no, no, not yet!" said he to himself.
And, while the king, protected by the thickness of an enormous lime tree, clasped La Vallière with all the ardor of an ineffable love, Colbert quietly searched in his note-book, whence he drew a paper folded like a letter, a paper a little yellow perhaps, but which must be very precious, since the intendant smiled in looking at it. Then he turned his hateful gaze back upon the charming group traced in the shadow by the young girl and the king, a group that the gleam of approaching torches came to light up.
Louis saw the gleam of those torches reflected on La Vallière's white robe.
— Go, Louise, he said to her, for see, they come.
— Mademoiselle, mademoiselle, they come, added Colbert to hasten the young girl's departure.
Louise disappeared rapidly among the trees. Then, as the king, who had sunk to his knees before the young girl, rose:
— Ah! Mlle de La Vallière has dropped something, said Colbert.
— What? asked the king.
— A paper, a letter, something white, see there, Sire.
The king bent quickly, and picked up the letter, crumpling it.
At that moment, the torches arrived, flooding with daylight that obscure scene.
Chapter CCXXII — Jealousy
This true light, this eagerness of all, this new ovation made to the king by Fouquet, came to suspend the effect of a resolution that La Vallière had already well shaken in the heart of Louis XIV.
He looked at Fouquet with a sort of gratitude toward him, for having furnished La Vallière the occasion to show herself so generous, so mighty over his heart.
It was the moment of the last marvels. Scarcely had Fouquet led the king toward the château than a mass of fire, escaping with a majestic rumble from the dome of Vaux, a dazzling aurora, came to light up even the smallest details of the parterres.
The fireworks began. Colbert, twenty paces from the king, whom the masters of Vaux surrounded and feted, sought by the obstinacy of his fatal thought to bring back Louis's attention upon ideas that the magnificence of the spectacle already drew too far away.
Suddenly, at the moment of handing it to Fouquet, the king felt in his hand that paper which, apparently, La Vallière, in fleeing, had let fall at his feet.
The strongest magnet of the thought of love drew the young prince toward the memory of his mistress.
By the light of that fire, ever growing in beauty, and which drew cries of admiration from the neighboring villages, the king read the note, which he supposed to be a love letter destined for him by La Vallière.
As he read, pallor mounted to his face, and that mute anger, illuminated by those fires of a thousand colors, made a terrible spectacle of which everyone would have shuddered, had each been able to read in that heart ravaged by the most sinister passions. For him, no more truce in jealousy and rage. From the moment he had discovered the dark truth, all vanished, pity, gentleness, religion of hospitality.
He came near, in the acute grief that wrung his heart, still too weak to disguise its suffering, he came near uttering a cry of alarm and calling his guards around him.
That letter, thrown in the king's path by Colbert—one has already guessed it—was the one which had disappeared with the gray horse Tobie at Fontainebleau, after Fouquet's attempt upon La Vallière's heart.
“Stories of the world, in your language.”