Part 22

— Well! said Fouquet, Seldon, this is not Marchiali.

— But Marchiali is not freed, my lord; he is here.

— Since you say that M. d'Herblay took him away and brought him back.

— I did not say that.

— You said it so well that it still seems to me I hear it.

— My tongue slipped.

— Monsieur de Baisemeaux, take care!

— I have nothing to fear, my lord; I am in order.

— Do you dare say that?

— I would say it before an apostle. M. d'Herblay brought me an order to free Seldon, and Seldon is freed.

— I tell you that Marchiali has left the Bastille.

— You must prove that to me, my lord.

— May I see him?

— My lord, he who governs this realm knows too well that no one enters to the prisoners without an express order from the king.

— M. d'Herblay entered well enough, himself.

— That is what would need proving, my lord.

— Monsieur de Baisemeaux, once again, pay heed to your words.

— The records are there.

— M. d'Herblay is overthrown.

— Overthrown, M. d'Herblay? Impossible!

— You see that he has influenced you.

— What influences me, my lord, is the king's service; I do my duty; give me an order from him, and you shall enter.

— Here, Monsieur the Governor, I pledge you my word that, if you let me go to the prisoner, I will give you a king's order on the spot.

— Give it right away, my lord.

— And that, if you refuse me, I will have you arrested at once, with all your officers.

— Before committing such violence, my lord, said Baisemeaux, very pale, you will reflect that we obey only a king's order, and that it will be as easy for you to have one to see M. Marchiali as to obtain one to do me, innocent as I am, so much harm.

— That is true! cried Fouquet in a fury, that is true! Well! Monsieur de Baisemeaux, he added in a ringing voice, drawing the wretched man to him, do you know why I so ardently wish to speak with this prisoner?

— No, my lord, and deign to observe how greatly you frighten me; I tremble at it, I am about to faint.

— You will faint even better presently, Monsieur Baisemeaux, when I return here with ten thousand men and thirty cannon.

— My God! His Lordship is going mad!

— When I stir up against you and your accursed towers all the people of Paris, and force your gates, and have you hanged from the battlements of the corner tower!

— My lord, my lord, for mercy's sake!

— I give you ten minutes to decide, added Fouquet in a calm voice; I sit here, in this armchair, and wait for you. If in ten minutes you persist, I leave, and think me mad as long as you please; but you shall see!

Baisemeaux stamped his foot like a man in despair, but replied nothing.

Seeing which, Fouquet seized a pen, ink, and wrote:

"Order to the Provost of Merchants to assemble the bourgeois guard and march on the Bastille, for the king's service."

Baisemeaux shrugged his shoulders; Fouquet wrote:

"Order to the Duc de Bouillon and the Prince de Condé to take command of the Swiss and the guards, and march on the Bastille, for His Majesty's service..."

Baisemeaux reflected. Fouquet wrote:

"Order to every soldier, bourgeois or gentleman, to seize and arrest in person, wherever they may be found, the Chevalier d'Herblay, Bishop of Vannes, and his accomplices who are: 1° M. de Baisemeaux, Governor of the Bastille, suspected of the crimes of treason, rebellion and lèse-majesté..."

— Stop, my lord, cried Baisemeaux; I understand absolutely nothing of this; but so many evils, were they unloosed by madness itself, may come to pass within two hours, that the king, who will judge me, will see whether I was wrong to bend the watch before such imminent catastrophes. Let us go to the donjon, my lord; you shall see Marchiali.

Fouquet sprang out of the room, and Baisemeaux followed, wiping the cold sweat that streamed from his brow.

— What a dreadful morning! said he; what a disgrace!

— Walk quickly! answered Fouquet.

Baisemeaux signaled to the turnkey to go before them. He was afraid of his companion. The latter noticed it.

— Enough of childishness! said he roughly. Leave that man there; take the keys yourself and show me the way. No one, do you understand, must be able to hear what is about to pass here.

— Ah! said Baisemeaux undecided.

— Again! cried Fouquet. Ah! say no at once, and I shall leave the Bastille to carry my dispatches myself.

Baisemeaux lowered his head, took the keys and climbed, alone with the minister, the tower staircase.

As they advanced into that whirling spiral, certain stifled murmurs became distinct cries and awful imprecations.

— What is that? asked Fouquet.

— It is your Marchiali, said the governor; that is how madmen howl!

He accompanied this reply with a look more full of wounding allusion than of politeness toward Fouquet.

The latter shuddered. He had, in a cry more terrible than the others, recognized the king's voice.

He stopped on the landing, took the bunch from Baisemeaux's hands. The latter thought the new madman was going to break his skull with one of those keys.

— Ah! he cried, M. d'Herblay had not spoken to me of that.

— Those keys, then! said Fouquet, snatching them from him. Where is the one to the door I wish to open?

— This one.

A frightful cry, followed by a terrible blow upon the door, came echoing in the staircase.

— Withdraw! said Fouquet to Baisemeaux in a threatening voice.

— I ask nothing better, murmured the latter. There are two madmen who are going to find themselves face to face. One will eat the other, I am sure of it.

— Begone, repeated Fouquet. If you set foot on this staircase before I call you, remember that you will take the place of the most wretched of the Bastille's prisoners.

— I shall die of it, that is certain! grumbled Baisemeaux, retreating with a faltering step.

The prisoner's cries rang out, more and more formidable. Fouquet assured himself that Baisemeaux had reached the foot of the steps. He put the key in the first lock.

It was then that he clearly heard the king's strangled voice crying in rage:

— Help! I am the king! Help!

The key to the second door was not the same as the first. Fouquet was obliged to search the bunch.

Meanwhile, the king, drunk, mad, frantic, cried at the top of his lungs:

— It is M. Fouquet who had me brought here! Help against M. Fouquet! I am the king! Help for the king against M. Fouquet!

These vociferations tore the minister's heart. They were followed by frightful blows, struck upon the door with that chair the king used as a battering ram. Fouquet managed to find the key. The king was at the end of his strength: he no longer articulated, he roared.

— Death to Fouquet! he howled, death to the scoundrel Fouquet!

The door opened.

Chapter CCXXIX — The King's Recognition

The two men who were about to rush toward each other suddenly stopped on seeing one another, and then uttered a cry of horror.

— Do you come to assassinate me, sir? said the king, recognizing Fouquet.

— The king in this state! murmured the minister.

Nothing, in fact, was more frightful than the aspect of the young prince at the moment Fouquet surprised him. His clothes were in rags; his shirt, open and torn, drank at once the sweat and the blood that escaped from his chest and from his lacerated arms.

Haggard, pale, foaming, hair bristling, Louis XIV offered the truest image of despair, hunger and fear united in a single statue. Fouquet was so moved, so troubled, that he ran to the king with open arms and tears in his eyes.

Louis raised above Fouquet the piece of wood of which he had made such furious use.

— Well! said Fouquet in a trembling voice, do you not recognize the most faithful of your friends?

— A friend, you? repeated Louis with a gnashing of teeth where sounded hatred and the thirst for swift vengeance.

— A respectful servant, added Fouquet, throwing himself on his knees.

The king let his weapon fall. Fouquet, approaching, kissed his knees, and took him tenderly in his arms.

— My king, my child, said he, how you must have suffered!

Louis, recalled to himself by the change in the situation, looked at himself, and, ashamed of his disorder, ashamed of his madness, ashamed of the protection he received, he drew back.

Fouquet did not understand this movement. He did not feel that the king's pride would never forgive him for having been witness to so much weakness.

— Come, Sire, you are free, said he.

— Free? repeated the king. Oh! you give me back my freedom after having dared to lay hands on me?

— You do not believe it! cried Fouquet indignantly; you do not believe that I am guilty in this matter!

And, rapidly, even warmly, he told him the whole intrigue whose details are known.

As long as the account lasted, Louis endured the most horrible anguish, and, the account ended, the greatness of the peril he had run struck him even more than the importance of the secret touching his twin brother.

— Sir, he suddenly said to Fouquet, this double birth is a lie; it is impossible that you were duped by it.

— Sire!

— It is impossible, I tell you, that one should suspect the honor, the virtue of my mother. And has my first minister not already done justice to the criminals?

— Reflect well, Sire, before flying into a passion, answered Fouquet. The birth of your brother...

— I have but one brother: that is Monsieur. You know him as I do. There is a plot, I tell you, beginning with the governor of the Bastille.

— Take care, Sire; that man was deceived, like everyone, by the prince's resemblance.

— Resemblance? Come now!

— It must nevertheless be that this Marchiali is very like Your Majesty, for all eyes to be taken in by it, insisted Fouquet.

— Folly!

— Say not so, Sire; the men who prepare to face the gaze of your ministers, of your mother, of your officers, of your family, those men must be very sure of the resemblance.

— Indeed, murmured the king; those men, where are they?

— Why, at Vaux.

— At Vaux! You suffer them to remain there?

— The most pressing thing, it seemed to me, was to deliver Your Majesty. I have fulfilled that duty. Now, let us do what the king shall order. I wait.

Louis reflected a moment.

— Let us gather troops in Paris, said he.

— Orders are given to that effect, replied Fouquet.

— You have given orders? cried the king.

— For that, yes, Sire. Your Majesty will be at the head of ten thousand men within an hour.

For all answer, the king took Fouquet's hand with such effusion that it was easy to see how much distrust he had kept against his minister until that word, despite the latter's intervention.

— And with those troops, pursued the king, we shall go besiege, in your house, the rebels, who must already have established or entrenched themselves there.

— That would surprise me, replied Fouquet.

— Why?

— Because their chief, the soul of the enterprise, having been unmasked by me, the whole plan seems to me aborted.

— You unmasked this false prince, him?

— No, I have not seen him.

— Who, then?

— The chief of the enterprise is not that unhappy one. He is but an instrument destined for misfortune all his life, I see it well.

— Absolutely!

— It is M. l'abbé d'Herblay, the Bishop of Vannes.

— Your friend?

— He was my friend, Sire, replied Fouquet nobly.

— That is unfortunate for you, said the king in a less generous tone.

— Such friendships were in no way dishonoring, so long as I was ignorant of the crime, Sire.

— You should have foreseen it.

— If I am guilty, I place myself in the hands of Your Majesty.

— Ah! Monsieur Fouquet, that is not what I mean, replied the king, vexed to have thus shown the bitterness of his thought. Well! I declare to you, despite the mask with which that wretch covered his face, I had a vague suspicion that it might be he. But, with the chief of the enterprise, there was a man of action. He who threatened me with his herculean strength, who is he?

— It must be his friend, the Baron du Vallon, the former musketeer.

— The friend of d'Artagnan? the friend of the Comte de La Fère? Ah! cried the king at that last name, let us not neglect this relation between the conspirators and M. de Bragelonne.

— Sire, Sire, go not too far. M. de La Fère is the most honest man in France. Content yourself with what I deliver to you.

— With what you deliver to me? Good! for you deliver the guilty to me, do you not?

— How does Your Majesty understand that? asked Fouquet.

— I understand, replied the king, that we are going to arrive at Vaux with forces, that we shall make short work of that nest of vipers, and nothing shall escape; nothing, is it not so?

— Your Majesty will have these men killed? cried Fouquet.

— To the last!

— Oh! Sire!

— Let us understand one another, Monsieur Fouquet, said the king haughtily. I no longer live in a time when assassination is the only, the last reason of kings. No, thank God! I have parliaments, I, who judge in my name, and I have scaffolds where my supreme wills are executed!

Fouquet grew pale.

— I shall take the liberty, said he, of observing to Your Majesty that any trial on these matters is a mortal scandal for the dignity of the throne. The august name of Anne of Austria must not pass through the lips of the people, parted for a smile.

— Justice must be done, sir.

— Very well, Sire; but royal blood cannot flow upon the scaffold!

— Royal blood! do you believe that? cried the king in fury, stamping his foot on the tile. This double birth is an invention. There, above all, in that invention, I see the crime of M. d'Herblay. It is that crime I wish to punish, far more than their violence, their insult.

— And punish with death?

— With death, yes, sir.

— Sire, said the Superintendent firmly, his brow, long lowered, rising proud, Your Majesty may have the head cut off, if she will, of Philippe of France, her brother; that concerns her, and she will consult Anne of Austria, her mother, thereupon. What she ordains will be well ordained. I therefore no longer wish to meddle in it, not even for the honor of your crown; but I have a grace to ask of you: I ask it of you.

— Speak, said the king, much troubled by the minister's last words. What do you need?

— The grace of M. d'Herblay and that of M. du Vallon.

— My assassins?

— Two rebels, Sire, that is all.

— Oh! I understand that you ask me grace for your friends.

— My friends! said Fouquet, deeply wounded.

— Your friends, yes; but the safety of my State demands an exemplary punishment of the guilty.

— I shall not observe to Your Majesty that I have just restored you to liberty, saved your life.

— Sir!

— I shall not observe to you that, had M. d'Herblay wished to play the assassin, he could simply have assassinated Your Majesty, this morning, in the forest of Sénart, and all was finished.

The king started.

— A pistol shot in the head, pursued Fouquet, and the face of Louis XIV, become unrecognizable, was forever the absolution of M. d'Herblay.

The king paled with horror at the sight of the avoided peril.

— M. d'Herblay, continued Fouquet, if he had been an assassin, had no need to tell me his plan to succeed. Rid of the true king, he made the false king impossible to guess. Had the usurper been recognized by Anne of Austria, he was still a son for her. The usurper, for the conscience of M. d'Herblay, was still a king of the blood of Louis XIII. Moreover, the conspirator had security, secrecy, impunity. A pistol shot gave him all that. Grace, for him, in the name of your safety, Sire!

The king, instead of being touched by this so true picture of Aramis's generosity, felt cruelly humiliated. His untamable pride could not grow accustomed to the idea that a man had held, suspended at the tip of his finger, the thread of a royal life. Each of the words Fouquet believed efficacious to obtain the grace of his friends dropped a new drop of venom into the already ulcerated heart of Louis XIV. Nothing could therefore bend him, and, addressing Fouquet impetuously:

— I truly do not know, sir, said he, why you ask me grace for those men! What is the use of asking what one may have without soliciting?

— I do not understand you, Sire.

— It is easy, though. Where am I here?

— At the Bastille, Sire.

— Yes, in a dungeon. I pass for a madman, do I not?

— That is true, Sire.

— And no one here knows anyone but Marchiali?

— Assuredly.

— Well! change nothing in the situation. Leave the madman to rot in a Bastille dungeon, and MM. d'Herblay and du Vallon have no need of my grace. Their new king will absolve them.

— Your Majesty wrongs me, Sire, and wrongly, replied Fouquet dryly. I am not child enough, M. d'Herblay is not fool enough, to have forgotten to make all those reflections, and, had I wished to make a new king, as you say, I had no need to come forcing the gates of the Bastille to draw you out. That is self-evident. Your Majesty's mind is troubled by anger. Otherwise, she would not offend without cause him of her servants who rendered her the most important service.

Louis perceived he had gone too far, that the gates of the Bastille were still closed upon him, while the sluices behind which that generous Fouquet contained his anger were opening little by little.

— I did not say that to humble you. God forbid! sir! replied he. Only, you address yourself to me to obtain a grace, and I answer you according to my conscience; now, according to my conscience, the guilty of whom we speak are worthy neither of grace nor pardon.

Fouquet replied nothing.

— What I do there, added the king, is as generous as what you did; for I am in your power. I shall even say it is more generous, seeing that you place me face to face with conditions on which may depend my liberty, my life, and that to refuse is to make the sacrifice of them.

— I was wrong, indeed, answered Fouquet. Yes, I seemed to extort a grace; I repent, I ask pardon of Your Majesty.

— And you are pardoned, my dear Monsieur Fouquet, said the king with a smile that completed the return of serenity upon his face, altered by so many events since the eve.

— I have my grace, the minister obstinately resumed; but MM. d'Herblay and du Vallon?

— Shall never obtain theirs, so long as I live, replied the king inflexibly. Do me the service of speaking of it no more.

— Your Majesty shall be obeyed.

— And you will bear me no grudge for it?

— Oh! no, Sire; for I had foreseen the case.

— You had foreseen that I would refuse the grace of those gentlemen?

— Assuredly, and all my measures were taken accordingly.

— What do you mean? cried the king in surprise.

— M. d'Herblay came, so to speak, to deliver himself into my hands. M. d'Herblay left me the happiness of saving my king and my country. I could not condemn M. d'Herblay to death. I could not either expose him to the very legitimate wrath of Your Majesty. That would have been the same as killing him myself.

— Well! what have you done?

— Sire, I gave M. d'Herblay my best horses, and they have four hours' advance over all those Your Majesty may send after him.

— So be it! murmured the king; but the world is wide enough for my runners to gain on your horses the four hours' advantage you gave M. d'Herblay.

— In giving him those four hours, Sire, I knew I was giving him life. He shall have life.

— How so?

— After having run well, always four hours ahead of your musketeers, he will arrive at my castle of Belle-Île, where I have given him refuge.

— So be it! but you forget that you gave me Belle-Île.

— Not to have my friends arrested.

— You take it back from me, then?

— For that, yes, Sire.

— My musketeers will take it back, and all will be said.

— Neither your musketeers nor even your army, Sire, said Fouquet coldly. Belle-Île is impregnable.

The king turned livid, a flash sprang from his eyes. Fouquet felt lost; but he was not of those who recoil before the voice of honor. He sustained the envenomed gaze of the king. The latter swallowed his rage, and, after a silence:

— Shall we go to Vaux? said he.

— I am at the orders of Your Majesty, replied Fouquet, bowing profoundly; but I believe Your Majesty cannot dispense with changing clothes before appearing before his court.

— We shall pass by the Louvre, said the king. Let us go.

And they went out before the astounded Baisemeaux, who, once again, watched Marchiali go out, and tore from himself the little hair that remained to him.

It is true that Fouquet gave him a discharge for the prisoner and that the king wrote beneath: _Seen and approved: Louis_; a folly which Baisemeaux, incapable of putting two ideas together, greeted with a heroic fist he drove into his own jaws.

Chapter CCXXX — The False King

Meanwhile, at Vaux, the usurping royalty bravely continued its role.

Philippe gave order that for his small levee they introduce the great entrances, already ready to appear before the king. He decided to give this order despite the absence of M. d'Herblay, who did not return, and our readers know for what reason. But the prince, not believing this absence could prolong itself, wished, like all temerarious spirits, to try his worth and his fortune, far from all protection, from all counsel.

Another reason pushed him thereto. Anne of Austria was about to appear; the guilty mother was about to find herself in the presence of her sacrificed son. Philippe did not wish, if he had a weakness, to make witness of it the man toward whom he was henceforth held to display so much strength.

Philippe opened the two leaves of the door, and several persons entered silently. Philippe did not move while his valets dressed him. He had seen, the eve before, his brother's habits. He played the king, in a manner to awaken no suspicion.

It was therefore fully dressed, in the hunting habit, that he received the visitors. His memory and Aramis's notes announced to him first of all Anne of Austria, to whom Monsieur gave his hand, then Madame with M. de Saint-Aignan.

He smiled on seeing those faces, and shuddered in recognizing his mother.

That noble and imposing figure, ravaged by sorrow, came to plead in his heart the cause of that famous queen who had immolated a child to reason of State. He found his mother beautiful. He knew that Louis XIV loved her, he promised himself to love her too, and not to be for her old age a cruel chastisement.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”