Part 19

— I do not understand a word of what you are telling me, my lord, and if you wish me to withdraw, let me know.

— Dear Monsieur d’Artagnan, your ways will drive me mad. I was falling asleep, you woke me.

— I shall never forgive myself, and if you would have me reconciled with myself...

— Well?

— Well! sleep there, before me, I shall be delighted.

— Under guard?...

— Then I am going.

— I no longer understand you.

— Good night, my lord.

And d’Artagnan pretended to withdraw.

Then M. Fouquet ran after him.

— I shall not go to bed, he said. Seriously, and since you refuse to treat me as a man, and are playing the cunning one with me, I am going to force you as one does a wild boar.

— Bah! cried d’Artagnan, affecting a smile.

— I am ordering my horses and setting out for Paris, said M. Fouquet, striking to the very heart of the captain of the musketeers.

— Ah! if that is the case, my lord, it is different.

— You are arresting me?

— No, but I am leaving with you.

— That is enough, Monsieur d’Artagnan, resumed Fouquet in a cold tone. It is not for nothing that you have the reputation of a man of wit and a man of resources; but, with me, all that is superfluous. Straight to the point: a service. Why are you arresting me? what have I done?

— Oh! I know nothing of what you have done; but I am not arresting you... tonight...

— Tonight! cried Fouquet, turning pale. But tomorrow?

— Oh! we are not at tomorrow, my lord. Who can ever answer for the morrow?

— Quick! quick! captain, let me speak with M. d’Herblay.

— Alas! that becomes impossible, my lord. I have orders to see to it that you speak with no one.

— With M. d’Herblay, captain, with your friend!

— My lord, is it by chance that M. d’Herblay, my friend, is the only one with whom I ought to prevent you from communicating?

Fouquet blushed, and assuming an air of resignation:

— Monsieur, he said, you are right, I am receiving a lesson I ought not to have provoked. The fallen man has a right to nothing, not even on the part of those whose fortune he made, still less on that of those to whom he has never had the happiness of rendering service.

— My lord!

— It is true, Monsieur d’Artagnan, you have always placed yourself with me in a good position, in the position befitting the man destined to arrest me. You never asked anything of me, you!

— My lord, answered the Gascon, touched by this eloquent and noble sorrow, will you, I beg you, give me your word as an honest man that you will not leave this room?

— What good would it do, dear Monsieur d’Artagnan, since you keep me here? Do you fear that I would struggle against the bravest sword in the kingdom?

— That is not it, my lord, it is that I am going to fetch M. d’Herblay for you, and consequently leave you alone.

Fouquet uttered a cry of joy and surprise.

— Fetch M. d’Herblay! leave me alone! he cried, clasping his hands.

— Where does M. d’Herblay lodge? in the blue room?

— Yes, my friend, yes.

— Your friend! thank you for the word, my lord. You give it to me today, if you did not give it to me formerly.

— Ah! you are saving me!

— It is a good ten minutes’ walk from here to the blue room, going and returning? resumed d’Artagnan.

— About that.

— And to wake Aramis, who sleeps soundly when he sleeps, to warn him, I allow five minutes: total, a quarter of an hour’s absence. Now, my lord, give me your word that you will in no way seek to flee, and that on returning here I shall find you here?

— I give it to you, Monsieur, answered Fouquet, pressing the musketeer’s hand with affectionate gratitude.

D’Artagnan disappeared.

Fouquet watched him go, waited with visible impatience until the door had closed behind him, and, the door closed, threw himself upon his keys, opened several secret drawers hidden in the furniture, sought in vain for certain papers, left no doubt at Saint-Mandé and which he seemed to regret not finding there; then, eagerly seizing letters, contracts, accounts, he made a heap of them which he hastily burned upon the marble slab of the hearth, not taking the trouble to remove from within the flowerpots that encumbered it.

Then, this operation completed, like a man who has just escaped an immense danger, and whom strength abandons as soon as that danger is no longer to be feared, he let himself fall, overwhelmed, into an armchair.

D’Artagnan re-entered and found Fouquet in the same position. The worthy musketeer had not doubted for an instant that Fouquet, having given his word, would not even think of breaking it; but he had thought that he would make use of his absence to rid himself of all papers, all notes, all contracts which might render more dangerous a position already grave enough. Accordingly, raising his head like a dog that takes the wind, he sniffed that smell of smoke which he counted on discovering in the atmosphere, and, having found it there, he made a movement of the head in sign of satisfaction.

At d’Artagnan’s entrance, Fouquet, for his part, had raised his head, and none of d’Artagnan’s movements escaped him.

Then the eyes of the two men met; both saw that they had understood one another without exchanging a word.

— Well! asked Fouquet first, and M. d’Herblay?

— Upon my faith! my lord, answered d’Artagnan, it must be that M. d’Herblay loves nocturnal walks and, by the light of the moon, in the park of Vaux, makes verses with some of your poets; but he was not at home.

— What! not at home? cried Fouquet, from whom his last hope was escaping, for, without his understanding in what way the Bishop of Vannes could assist him, he comprehended that in reality he could expect help from no one but him.

— Or else, continued d’Artagnan, if he is at home, he had reasons for not answering.

— But you did not call in a way that he would hear, Monsieur?

— You do not suppose, my lord, that, already outside my orders, which forbade me to leave you for a single instant, you do not suppose I was fool enough to wake the whole house and show myself in the corridor of the Bishop of Vannes, so as to have it well established by M. Colbert that I was giving you time to burn your papers?

— My papers?

— Doubtless; that is at least what I should have done in your place. When a door is opened to me, I take advantage of it.

— Well! yes, thank you, I took advantage of it.

— And you did well, morbleu! Everyone has his little secrets that are no concern of others. But let us return to Aramis, my lord.

— Well! I tell you, you must have called too softly, and he did not hear.

— However softly one calls Aramis, my lord, Aramis always hears when he has an interest in hearing. I therefore repeat my phrase: Aramis was not at home, my lord, or Aramis had, for not recognizing my voice, motives that I ignore and that you yourself perhaps ignore, all your liege man though His Grace the Bishop of Vannes is.

Fouquet sighed, rose, took three or four steps about the room, and ended by going to seat himself, with an expression of profound dejection, upon his magnificent velvet bed, all trimmed with splendid lace.

D’Artagnan looked at Fouquet with a sentiment of profound pity.

— I have seen many people arrested in my life, said the musketeer with melancholy, I saw M. de Cinq-Mars arrested, I saw M. de Chalais arrested. I was very young. I saw M. de Condé arrested with the princes, I saw M. de Retz arrested, I saw M. Broussel arrested. See here, my lord, it is sad to say, but of all those people the one you most resemble at this moment is old Broussel. It is close to your putting, like him, your napkin in your portfolio, and wiping your mouth with your papers. Mordioux! Monsieur Fouquet, a man like you does not have such dejection. If your friends saw you!...

— Monsieur d’Artagnan, resumed the superintendent with a smile full of sadness, you do not understand: it is precisely because my friends do not see me, that I am as you see me, you. I do not live all alone, I! I am nothing all alone. Mark well that I have employed my existence in making myself friends whose support I hoped to make my own. In prosperity, all those happy voices, and happy through me, made me a concert of praise and thanksgiving. In the least disfavor, those more humble voices harmoniously accompanied the murmurs of my soul. Isolation, I have never known it. Poverty, a phantom that at times I have glimpsed with its rags at the end of my road! poverty, it is the specter with which several of my friends have been playing for so many years, that they poeticize, that they caress, that they make me love! Poverty! but I accept it, I recognize it, I welcome it as a disinherited sister; for poverty, that is not solitude, that is not exile, that is not prison! Could I ever be poor, I, with friends like Pélisson, like La Fontaine, like Molière? with a mistress, like... Oh! but solitude, for me, a man of noise, for me, a man of pleasures, for me who am only because others are!... Oh! If you knew how alone I am at this moment! and how you seem to me, you who separate me from all I loved, the image of solitude, of nothingness and of death!

— But I have already told you, Monsieur Fouquet, answered d’Artagnan, touched to the depths of his soul, I have already told you that you exaggerate things. The king loves you.

— No, said Fouquet, shaking his head, no!

— M. Colbert hates you.

— M. Colbert? what do I care!

— He will ruin you.

— Oh! as for that, I defy him: I am ruined.

At this strange avowal of the superintendent, d’Artagnan cast an expressive glance about him. Though he opened not his mouth, Fouquet understood him so well that he added:

— What use are these magnificences, when one is no longer magnificent? Do you know what most of our possessions serve us, we rich? It is to disgust us, by their very splendor, with all that does not equal that splendor. Vaux! you will say to me, the marvels of Vaux, is it not? Well! what of it? What to do with that marvel? With what, if I am ruined, shall I pour water into the urns of my naiads, fire into the entrails of my salamanders, air into the breast of my tritons? To be rich enough, Monsieur d’Artagnan, one must be too rich.

D’Artagnan shook his head.

— Oh! I know well what you are thinking, replied Fouquet quickly. If you had Vaux, you would sell it, you, and you would buy an estate in the province. That estate would have woods, orchards and fields; that estate would feed its master. From forty millions, you would make well...

— Ten millions, interrupted d’Artagnan.

— Not a million, my dear captain. None in France is rich enough to buy Vaux for two millions and maintain it as it is; none could, none would know how.

— Well! said d’Artagnan, in any case, a million...

— Well?

— That is not misery.

— It is very near it, my dear Monsieur.

— How?

— Oh! you do not understand. No, I will not sell my house at Vaux. I give it to you, if you wish.

And Fouquet accompanied these words with an inexpressible movement of the shoulders.

— Give it to the king, you will make a better bargain.

— The king has no need that I give it to him, said Fouquet; he will take it perfectly well, if it pleases him: that is why I would rather it perish. See here, Monsieur d’Artagnan, if the king were not beneath my roof, I would take this candle, I would go beneath the dome to set fire to two cases of rockets and fireworks that had been kept in reserve, and I would reduce my palace to ashes.

— Bah! said the musketeer negligently. In any case, you would not burn the gardens. That is the best of what you have.

— And then, resumed Fouquet in a low voice, what have I said there, my God! Burn Vaux! destroy my palace! But Vaux is not mine, but these riches, but these marvels, they belong, as enjoyment, to him who paid for them, that is true, but as duration, they are to those who created them. Vaux is Le Brun’s; Vaux is Le Nôtre’s; Vaux is Pélisson’s, Levau’s, La Fontaine’s; Vaux is Molière’s, who had _Les Fâcheux_ played there; Vaux is posterity’s, finally. You see well, Monsieur d’Artagnan, that I no longer have my house to myself.

— That is right, said d’Artagnan, there is an idea I like, and there I recognize M. Fouquet. That idea draws me away from old Broussel, and I no longer recognize in it the whimperings of the old frondeur. If you are ruined, my lord, take it well; you too, mordioux! you belong to posterity and you have not the right to diminish yourself. See here, look at me, I who seem to exercise a superiority over you because I am arresting you; fate, which distributes the roles to the players of this world, has given me a less fine one, less pleasant to play than yours was. I am of those, you see, who think that the roles of kings or of the powerful are worth more than the roles of beggars or of lackeys. It is better, even on stage, upon another theater than the theater of the world, it is better to wear the fine habit and chew the fine language than to scrape the boards with a slipper or have one’s back caressed with sticks padded with tow. In a word, you abused gold, you commanded, you enjoyed. I, I dragged my leash; I, I obeyed; I, I suffered. Well! little as I am worth beside you, my lord, I declare it to you: the memory of what I have done serves me as a goad that keeps me from bowing my old head too soon. I shall be to the end a good squadron horse, and I shall fall stiff, all of a piece, all alive, after having well chosen my place. Do like me, Monsieur Fouquet; you will not find yourself the worse for it. That happens but once to men like you. The whole is to do well when it happens. There is a Latin proverb whose words I have forgotten, but whose sense I recall, for more than once I have meditated on it: it says: “The end crowns the work.”

Fouquet rose, came to pass his arm around d’Artagnan’s neck, whom he pressed to his breast, while, with the other hand, he clasped his hand.

— That is a fine sermon, he said after a pause.

— Sermon of a musketeer, my lord.

— You love me, you, who tell me all that.

— Perhaps.

Fouquet became thoughtful again. Then, after an instant:

— But M. d’Herblay, he asked, where can he be?

— Ah! there is the thing!

— I dare not beg you to have him sought.

— You might beg me, I would do it no more, Monsieur Fouquet. It is imprudent. It would be known, and Aramis, who is not in cause in all this, might be compromised and engulfed in your disgrace.

— I shall wait for daylight, said Fouquet.

— Yes, that is the best.

— What shall we do, by day?

— I know nothing of it, my lord.

— Do me a grace, Monsieur d’Artagnan.

— Very willingly.

— You guard me, I remain; you are in the full execution of your orders, are you not?

— But yes.

— Well! be my shadow, so be it! I prefer that shadow to another.

D’Artagnan bowed.

— But forget that you are M. d’Artagnan, captain of the musketeers; forget that I am M. Fouquet, superintendent of finances, and let us talk of my affairs.

— Pest! that is thorny, that.

— Truly?

— Yes; but, for you, Monsieur Fouquet, I would do the impossible.

— Thanks. What did the king say to you?

— Nothing.

— Ah! is that how you talk?

— Well!

— What do you think of my situation?

— Nothing.

— However, short of ill will...

— Your situation is difficult.

— In what?

— In that you are in your own house.

— Difficult as it is, I understand it well.

— Pardieu! do you imagine that with another than you I should have used so much frankness?

— How, so much frankness? You have been frank with me, you! you who refuse to tell me the least thing?

— So many ways. There.

— That is right!

— See here, my lord, listen how I should have gone about it with another than you: I arrived at your door, the people gone, or, if they were not gone, I waited for them at their exit and caught them one by one, like rabbits at a burrowing-out; I coffered them without noise, I stretched myself upon the carpet of your corridor, and, a hand upon you, without your suspecting it, I kept you for the master’s breakfast. In that way no scandal, no defense, no noise, but also, no warning for M. Fouquet, no reserve, none of those delicate concessions that between courteous people one makes at the decisive moment. Are you content with that plan?

— It makes me shudder.

— Is it not? it would have been sad to appear tomorrow, without preparation, and ask you for your sword.

— Oh! Monsieur, I should have died of shame and anger!

— Your gratitude expresses itself too eloquently; I have done nothing, believe me.

— Assuredly, Monsieur, you will never make me avow that.

— Well! now, my lord, if you are content with me, if you have recovered from the shock, which I softened as best I could, let time beat its wings, you are exhausted, you have reflections to make, I beg you: sleep or pretend to sleep, upon your bed or in your bed. I, I sleep in this armchair, and when I sleep, my sleep is so sound that cannon would not wake me.

Fouquet smiled.

— I except however, continued the musketeer, the case where one should open a door, whether secret or visible, whether of exit or of entry. Oh! for that, my ear is vulnerable to the last degree. A creak makes me start. It is a matter of natural antipathy. Go then, come then, walk about the room, write, erase, tear, burn, but do not touch the key of the lock; but do not touch the knob of the door, for you would wake me with a start, and that would horribly irritate my nerves.

— Decidedly, Monsieur d’Artagnan, said Fouquet, you are the most witty and most courteous man I know, and you will leave me but one regret, that of having made your acquaintance so late.

D’Artagnan breathed a sigh that meant: “Alas! perhaps you made it too soon!”

Then he sank into his armchair, while Fouquet, half-lying upon his bed and leaning on his elbow, dreamed of his adventure.

And both, leaving the candles burning, thus awaited the first waking of day, and when Fouquet sighed too loud, d’Artagnan snored the louder.

No visit, not even that of Aramis, disturbed their quiet, no noise was heard in the vast house.

Without, the honor rounds and the musketeer patrols made the sand cry beneath their steps: it was a further tranquillity for the sleepers. To which join the noise of the wind and of the fountains, which perform their eternal function, without concerning themselves with the little noises and little things of which are composed the life and the death of man.

Chapter CCXXVI — The Morning

Beside this lugubrious fate of the king shut up in the Bastille and gnawing in despair at the bolts and bars, the rhetoric of the ancient chroniclers would not fail to place the antithesis of Philippe sleeping beneath the royal canopy. It is not that rhetoric is always bad and always sows amiss the flowers with which it would embroider history; but we shall excuse ourselves from carefully polishing the antithesis here and from drawing with interest the other picture destined to serve as a pendant to the first.

The young prince descended from Aramis’s rooms as the king had descended from the chamber of Morpheus. The dome lowered slowly under the pressure of M. d’Herblay, and Philippe found himself before the royal bed, which had been raised again after depositing its prisoner in the depths of the subterranean vaults.

Alone in presence of that luxury, alone before all his power, alone before the role he was going to be forced to play, Philippe felt for the first time his soul open to those thousand emotions which are the vital beatings of a king’s heart.

But pallor seized him when he considered that empty bed still creased by the body of his brother.

That mute accomplice had returned after having served the consummation of the deed. It returned with the trace of the crime, it spoke to the guilty the frank and brutal language that the accomplice never fears to employ with his accomplice. It told the truth.

Philippe, bending to see better, perceived the handkerchief still damp with the cold sweat that had streamed from the brow of Louis XIV. That sweat terrified Philippe as the blood of Abel terrified Cain.

— Here I am face to face with my destiny, said Philippe, eye aflame, face livid. Will it be more frightful than my captivity was painful? Forced to follow at every instant the usurpations of thought, shall I always think to listen to the scruples of my heart?... Well! yes! the king rested upon this bed; yes, it is indeed his head that hollowed this fold in the pillow, it is indeed the bitterness of his tears that softened this handkerchief and I hesitate to lay myself upon this bed, to clasp in my hand this handkerchief embroidered with the arms and cipher of the king!... Come, let us imitate M. d’Herblay, who wills that action always be a degree above thought; let us imitate M. d’Herblay, who always thinks of himself and calls himself an honest man when he has discontented or betrayed only his enemies. This bed, I should have occupied it if Louis XIV had not deprived me of it by the crime of our mother. This handkerchief embroidered with the arms of France, it would belong to me to make use of it, if, as M. d’Herblay observes, I had been left in my place in the royal cradle. Philippe, son of France, mount again upon your bed! Philippe, sole king of France, take again your blazon! Philippe, sole presumptive heir of Louis XIII, your father, be without pity for the usurper, who has not even at this moment the remorse of all you have suffered!

This said, Philippe, despite his instinctive repugnance of the body, despite the shivers and the terror that his will subdued, laid himself upon the royal bed, and constrained his muscles to press the couch still warm from Louis XIV, while he pressed upon his brow the handkerchief damp with sweat.

When his head fell back and hollowed the soft pillow, Philippe perceived above his brow the crown of France, held, as we have said, by the angel with wings of gold.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”