Part 30

“What!” he thought after graciously thanking Mr. Brienne’s clerk, “it is through Mr. Fouquet that this journey will be paid for! Good Lord! that is pure Louis XI. Why was this draft not drawn on Mr. Colbert’s cash box? He would have paid it with such joy!”

And d’Artagnan, faithful to his principle of never letting a sight draft grow cold, went off to Mr. Fouquet’s to collect his two hundred pistoles.

Chapter CCXLI — The Supper

The superintendent had no doubt received notice of the imminent departure for Nantes, for he was giving a farewell dinner to his friends.

From the bottom of the house to the top, the bustle of servants bearing dishes and the flurry of ledgers bore witness to an approaching upheaval in both the treasury and the kitchen.

D’Artagnan, his draft in hand, presented himself in the offices, where he was given this answer: that it was too late to cash it, that the cash box was closed.

He replied with a single word:

“The king’s service.”

The clerk, somewhat disconcerted, so grave was the captain’s countenance, rejoined that it was a respectable reason, but that the customs of the house were also respectable; consequently, he begged the bearer to call again the next day.

D’Artagnan asked to be shown to Mr. Fouquet.

The clerk retorted that the superintendent did not concern himself with such details, and abruptly shut his last door in d’Artagnan’s face.

The latter had foreseen the move, and placed his boot between the door and the jamb, so that the lock did not catch, and the clerk found himself once more face to face with his interlocutor. He therefore changed his tune, saying to d’Artagnan with a frightened politeness:

“If Monsieur wishes to speak to the superintendent, let him go to the antechambers; this is the offices, where Monseigneur never comes.”

“That’s the way to talk! say that, then!” replied d’Artagnan.

“Across the courtyard,” said the clerk, delighted to be free.

D’Artagnan crossed the courtyard, and fell among the servants.

“Monseigneur is not receiving at this hour,” was the answer given him by a knave who was carrying on a vermeil platter three pheasants and twelve quails.

“Tell him,” said the captain, stopping the servant by the edge of his platter, “that I am Mr. d’Artagnan, captain-lieutenant of the king’s musketeers.”

The servant gave a cry of surprise and vanished.

D’Artagnan had followed him at a slow pace. He arrived just in time to find in the antechamber Mr. Pélisson, who, somewhat pale, had just come from the dining room and was hurrying for news.

D’Artagnan smiled.

“Nothing distressing, Mr. Pélisson, nothing but a little draft to be cashed.”

“Ah!” breathed the friend of Fouquet.

And he took the captain by the hand, drew him after him, and made him enter the room, where a good number of intimate friends surrounded the superintendent, seated in the center and buried in a cushioned armchair.

There were gathered all the epicureans who, not long since, at Vaux, did the honors of the house, of the wit, and of the wealth of Mr. Fouquet.

Joyful friends, tender for the most part, they had not fled their protector at the approach of the storm, and, despite the threats of heaven, despite the earthquake, they held there, smiling, attentive, devoted to misfortune as they had been to prosperity.

To the left of the superintendent, Mme de Bellière; to his right, Mme Fouquet: as if, defying the law of the world and silencing every consideration of vulgar propriety, the two protecting angels of this man united to lend him, at a moment of crisis, the support of their intertwined arms.

Mme de Bellière was pale, trembling, and full of respectful attentions toward Mme the superintendante, who, one hand upon her husband’s hand, anxiously watched the door through which Pélisson was about to bring d’Artagnan.

The captain entered, full of courtesy at first, and of admiration afterward, when, with his infallible glance, he had at once divined and embraced the meaning of every countenance.

Fouquet, raising himself in his armchair:

“Pardon me,” he said, “Mr. d’Artagnan, if I did not come to receive you as one coming in the king’s name.”

And he accented these last words with a sort of sad firmness that pierced the hearts of his friends with dread.

“Monseigneur,” replied d’Artagnan, “I do not come to you in the king’s name, save to claim payment of a draft for two hundred pistoles.”

Every brow cleared; that of Fouquet alone remained clouded.

“Ah!” said he, “Mr., are you also departing for Nantes, perhaps?”

“I know not where I am going, monseigneur.”

“But,” said Mme Fouquet, reassured, “you are not leaving so fast, captain, that you cannot do us the honor of sitting with us.”

“Madame, it would be a very great honor for me; but I am so pressed that, as you see, I had to permit myself to interrupt your meal to have my note paid.”

“To which answer shall be made in gold,” said Fouquet, making a sign to his steward, who at once departed with the draft d’Artagnan held out to him.

“Oh!” said the latter, “I was not anxious about payment: the house is good.”

A painful smile traced itself upon the faded features of Fouquet.

“You are suffering?” asked Mme de Bellière.

“Your fit?” asked Mme Fouquet.

“Nothing, thank you!” replied the superintendent.

“Your fit?” said d’Artagnan in his turn. Are you ill, monseigneur?

“I have a tertian fever that seized me after the fête at Vaux.”

“Some chill in the grottoes, at night?”

“No, no; an emotion, that is all.”

“The too much heart you put into receiving the king,” said La Fontaine tranquilly, without suspecting he was uttering a sacrilege.

“One can never put too much heart into receiving the king,” said Fouquet gently to his poet.

“Monsieur meant too much ardor,” interrupted d’Artagnan with perfect frankness and much amenity. The fact is, monseigneur, that hospitality was never practiced as at Vaux.”

Mme Fouquet let her face clearly express that, if Fouquet had behaved well toward the king, the king was not returning the like to the minister.

But d’Artagnan knew the terrible secret. He knew it alone with Fouquet; these two men had not, the one the courage to pity the other, the other the right to accuse.

The captain, to whom the two hundred pistoles were brought, was about to take his leave, when Fouquet, rising, took a glass and had one given to d’Artagnan.

“Monsieur,” said he, “to the health of the king, *whatever may happen!*”

“And to your health, monseigneur, *whatever may happen!*” said d’Artagnan, drinking.

He saluted, upon these ill-omened words, the whole company, which rose as soon as he had made his bow, and his spurs and boots were heard even in the depths of the staircase.

“I thought for a moment it was myself and not my money he was after,” said Fouquet, trying to laugh.

“You!” cried his friends, and why, good heavens?

“Oh!” said the superintendent, “let us not deceive ourselves, dear brothers in Epicurus; I would not compare the humblest fisherman on earth with the God we adore, but, you see, he once gave his friends a meal called the Supper, which was but a farewell dinner like the one we are having at this moment.”

A cry, a dolorous denial, broke from every corner of the table.

“Close the doors,” said Fouquet.

And the servants disappeared.

“My friends,” continued Fouquet, lowering his voice, “what was I formerly? what am I today? Consult yourselves and answer. A man like me declines by the very fact that he no longer rises; what will be said when he actually abases himself? I have no more money, I have no more credit, I have only powerful enemies and friends without power.”

“Quick!” cried Pélisson, rising, “since you speak with this frankness, it is for us to be frank also. Yes, you are lost; yes, you are rushing to your ruin, stop yourself. And, first of all, what have we left in money?”

“Seven hundred thousand livres,” said the steward.

“Bread,” murmured Mme Fouquet.

“Relay horses,” said Pélisson, “relay horses, and flee.”

“Where to?”

“To Switzerland, to Savoy, but flee.”

“If Monseigneur flees,” said Mme de Bellière, “they will say he was guilty and that he was afraid.”

“They will say more, they will say I carried twenty millions away with me.”

“We will write memoirs to justify you,” said La Fontaine; “flee.”

“I shall remain,” said Fouquet, “and, besides, does not everything serve me?”

“You have Belle-Île!” cried the abbé Fouquet.

“And I am going there naturally, in going to Nantes,” replied the superintendent; “patience, then, patience!”

“Before Nantes, what a distance!” said Mme Fouquet.

“Yes, I know it well,” replied Fouquet; “but what to do? The king summons me to the Estates. I know well it is to ruin me; but to refuse to depart is to show uneasiness.”

“Well! I have found the means to reconcile everything,” cried Pélisson. “You are going to depart for Nantes.”

Fouquet looked at him with a surprised air.

“But with friends, but in your carriage as far as Orléans, in your barge as far as Nantes; always ready to defend yourself if attacked, to escape if threatened; in a word, you will carry your money as your only chance, and, while fleeing, you will have done nothing but obey the king; then, touching the sea when you wish, you will embark for Belle-Île, and, from Belle-Île, you will launch wherever you wish, like the eagle that issues and takes the open sky when driven from its eyrie.”

A unanimous assent greeted the words of Pélisson.

“Yes, do that,” said Mme Fouquet to her husband.

“Do that,” said Mme de Bellière.

“Do it! do it!” cried all the friends.

“I shall do it,” replied Fouquet.

“This very evening.”

“In an hour.”

“At once.”

“With seven hundred thousand livres, you will begin a fortune anew,” said the abbé Fouquet. “Who will prevent us from arming corsairs at Belle-Île?”

“And, if need be, we will go discover a new world,” added La Fontaine, drunk with projects and enthusiasm.

A knock struck at the door interrupted this confluence of joy and hope.

“A courier from the king!” cried the master of ceremonies. Then there fell a profound silence, as if the message this courier brought were but an answer to all the schemes engendered the instant before.

Each awaited what the master would do, whose brow streamed with sweat, and who, truly, suffered from his fever.

Fouquet passed into his cabinet to receive His Majesty’s message.

There was, as we have said, such silence in the rooms and throughout the household that one could hear the voice of Fouquet answering:

“Very well, monsieur.”

This voice was nevertheless broken by fatigue, altered by emotion.

An instant after, Fouquet called Gourville, who crossed the gallery amid universal expectation.

At length he reappeared among his guests, but it was no longer the same face, pale and wasted, that had been seen at the departure; from pale he had become livid, and, from wasted, decomposed. A living specter, he advanced with outstretched arms, parched mouth, like the shade that has just saluted friends of former days.

At this sight each rose, each cried out, each ran to Fouquet.

The latter, looking at Pélisson, leaned on the superintendante, and pressed the icy hand of the marquise de Bellière.

“Well!” said he in a voice that had nothing human left.

“What is happening, good God?” was said to him.

Fouquet opened his right hand, which was clenched, moist; there was seen a paper upon which Pélisson threw himself in terror.

He read the following lines in the king’s hand:

“Dear and beloved Monsieur Fouquet, give us, from what remains due to us from you, a sum of seven hundred thousand livres of which we have need this day for our departure.

“And, as we know your health is not good, we pray God that He restore you to health and keep you in His holy and worthy guard.

“Louis.

“The present letter is for receipt.”

A murmur of dread circulated in the room.

“Well!” cried Pélisson in his turn, “you have this letter?”

“I have the receipt, yes.”

“What will you do, then?”

“Nothing, since I have the receipt.”

“But...”

“If I have the receipt, Pélisson, it is because I have paid,” said the superintendent with a simplicity that wrung the hearts of those present.

“You have paid?” cried Mme Fouquet in despair. “Then we are lost!”

“Come, come, no more useless words,” interrupted Pélisson. “After the money, life. Monseigneur, to horse, to horse!”

“Leave us!” cried the two women at once, drunk with grief.

“Why, monseigneur, in saving yourself you save us all. To horse!”

“But he cannot sit a horse! See.”

“Oh! if one reflects...” said the intrepid Pélisson.

“He is right,” murmured Fouquet.

“Monseigneur! monseigneur!” cried Gourville, mounting the stairs four steps at a time; “Monseigneur!”

“Well! what?”

“I was escorting, as you know, the king’s courier with the money.”

“Yes.”

“Well! arrived at the Palais-Royal, I saw...”

“Catch your breath a little, poor friend, you are suffocating.”

“What did you see?” cried the impatient friends.

“I saw the musketeers mounting their horses,” said Gourville.

“Do you see!” was cried, “do you see! Is there an instant to lose?”

Mme Fouquet rushed up the stairs demanding her horses.

Mme de Bellière sprang to take her in her arms and said to her:

“Madame, in the name of his safety, show nothing, manifest no alarm.”

Pélisson ran to have the carriages harnessed.

And, during this time, Gourville gathered into his hat what the weeping and terrified friends could throw in of gold and silver, last offering, pious alms given to misfortune by poverty.

The superintendent, dragged by some, carried by others, was shut into his carriage. Gourville mounted the seat and took the reins; Pélisson supported the fainting Mme Fouquet.

Mme de Bellière had more strength; she was well repaid for it: she gathered Fouquet’s last kiss.

Pélisson easily explained this precipitate departure by an order of the king summoning the ministers to Nantes.

Chapter CCXLII — In Mr. Colbert’s Carriage

As Gourville had seen, the king’s musketeers were mounting their horses and following their captain.

The latter, who wished to have no constraint in his movements, left his brigade under the orders of a lieutenant, and set off on his own, on post horses, recommending to his men the greatest diligence.

However rapidly they went, they could not arrive before him.

He had time, in passing before the rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, to see a thing that gave him much to think upon. He saw Mr. Colbert issuing from his house to enter a carriage that stood waiting before the door.

In this carriage, d’Artagnan perceived women’s headdresses, and, being curious, he wished to know the names of the women hidden by the headdresses.

To manage to see them, for they were making themselves round-backed and sharp-eared, he pushed his horse so close to the carriage that his funnel boot rubbed the little mantle and shook the whole, container and contents.

The ladies, startled, uttered, one a little cry whereby d’Artagnan recognized a young woman, the other an imprecation whereby he recognized the vigor and assurance given by half a century.

The headdresses parted: one of the women was Mme Vanel, the other was the duchess de Chevreuse.

D’Artagnan saw quicker than the ladies. He recognized them and they did not recognize him; and, as they laughed at their fright while affectionately pressing each other’s hands:

“Good!” said d’Artagnan to himself, “the old duchess is no longer so difficult as formerly in friendships; she is courting Mr. Colbert’s mistress! Poor Mr. Fouquet! that bodes him nothing good.”

And he went away. Mr. Colbert took his place in the carriage, and this noble trio began a rather slow pilgrimage toward the wood of Vincennes.

On the way, Mme de Chevreuse set Mme Vanel down at Mr. her husband’s, and, left alone with Colbert, pursued her drive conversing of business. She had an inexhaustible fund of conversation, this dear duchess, and, as she always spoke to the ill of others, always to her own good, her conversation amused the interlocutor and was not without good return for her.

She taught Colbert, who was ignorant of it, how great a minister he was, and how little Fouquet was about to become.

She promised him, when he should be superintendent, to rally to him all the old nobility of the kingdom, and asked his opinion on the preponderance that should be allowed to La Vallière.

She praised him, she blamed him, she bewildered him. She showed him the secret of so many secrets that Colbert feared for a moment he had to do with the devil.

She proved to him that she held in her hand the Colbert of today, as she had held the Fouquet of yesterday.

And, as, naively, he asked her the reason for that hatred she bore the superintendent:

“Why do you hate him yourself?” said she.

“Madame, in politics,” replied he, “differences of system may bring about dissensions among men. Mr. Fouquet seemed to me to practice a system opposed to the true interests of the king.”

She interrupted him.

“I speak to you no more of Mr. Fouquet. The journey the king is making to Nantes will account for him to us. Mr. Fouquet, for me, is a man of the past. For you also.”

Colbert answered nothing.

“On the return from Nantes,” continued the duchess, “the king, who seeks but a pretext, will find that the Estates behaved ill, that they made too few sacrifices. The Estates will say that the taxes are too heavy and that the superintendence ruined them. The king will lay it upon Mr. Fouquet, and then...”

“And then?” said Colbert.

“Oh! he will be disgraced. Is that not your feeling?”

Colbert cast toward the duchess a glance that meant: “If they only disgrace Mr. Fouquet, you will not be the cause of it.”

“It must,” hastened to say Mme de Chevreuse, “it must be that your place be quite marked out, Mr. Colbert. Do you see anyone between the king and you, after the fall of Mr. Fouquet?”

“I do not understand,” said he.

“You are going to understand. Where do your ambitions tend?”

“I have none.”

“It was useless then to overthrow the superintendent, Mr. Colbert. It is idle.”

“I had the honor to tell you, madame...”

“Oh! yes, the interest of the king, I know; but, in short, let us speak of yours.”

“Mine is to do His Majesty’s business.”

“In short, do you lose or do you not lose Mr. Fouquet? Answer without evasion.”

“Madame, I lose no one.”

“I do not then understand why you bought from me so dearly the letters of Mr. Mazarin concerning Mr. Fouquet. I do not conceive either why you placed those letters under the king’s eyes.”

Colbert, stupefied, looked at the duchess, and, with a constrained air:

“Madame,” said he, “I conceive still less how, you who took the money, you reproach me with it.”

“It is that,” said the old duchess, “one must will what one wills, unless one cannot do what one wills.”

“That is it,” said Colbert, thrown by this brutal logic.

“You cannot? eh? Speak.”

“I cannot, I confess, destroy near the king certain influences.”

“Which combat for Mr. Fouquet? Which? Wait, let me help you.”

“Do, madame.”

“La Vallière?”

“Oh! little influence, no knowledge of affairs and no spring. Mr. Fouquet paid court to her.”

“To defend him would be to accuse herself, would it not?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“There is yet another influence, what say you of it?”

“Considerable.”

“The queen mother, perhaps?”

“Her Majesty the queen mother has for Mr. Fouquet a weakness very prejudicial to her son.”

“Do not believe that,” said the old lady smiling.

“Oh!” said Colbert with incredulity, “I have so often experienced it!”

“Formerly?”

“Quite recently still, madame, at Vaux. It is she who prevented the king from having Mr. Fouquet arrested.”

“One is not of the same mind every day, dear sir. What the queen may have wished recently, she might perhaps no longer wish today.”

“Why?” said Colbert astonished.

“The reason matters little.”

“It matters very much, on the contrary; for, if I were certain of not displeasing Her Majesty the queen mother, all my scruples would be lifted.”

“Well! you have not failed to hear speak of a certain secret?”

“A secret?”

“Call it what you will. In short, the queen mother has taken in horror all those who have participated, in one way or another, in the discovery of this secret, and Mr. Fouquet, I believe, is one of those.”

“Then,” said Colbert, “one might be sure of the assent of the queen mother?”

“I left Her Majesty this instant, who assured me of it.”

“Be it so, madame.”

“There is more: you perhaps know a man who was the intimate friend of Mr. Fouquet, Mr. d’Herblay, a bishop, I believe?”

“Bishop of Vannes.”

“Well! this Mr. d’Herblay, who also knew this secret, the queen mother has caused to be pursued with ferocity.”

“Indeed!”

“So pursued that, were he dead, they would wish to have his head to be sure it will speak no more.”

“Is that the desire of the queen mother?”

“An order.”

“They will seek this Mr. d’Herblay, madame.”

“Oh! we know well where he is.”

Colbert looked at the duchess.

“Say, madame.”

“He is at Belle-Île-en-Mer.”

“At Mr. Fouquet’s?”

“At Mr. Fouquet’s.”

“He shall be had!”

It was the duchess’s turn to smile.

“Do not believe that so easily,” said she, “and do not promise it so lightly.”

“Why so, madame?”

“Because Mr. d’Herblay is not one of those men one takes when one wishes.”

“A rebel, then?”

“Oh! we others, Mr. Colbert, have spent all our life making rebels, and, yet, as you see plainly, far from being taken, we take others.”

Colbert fixed upon the old duchess one of those fierce looks whose expression nothing translated, and, with a firmness not lacking in grandeur:

“The time is no more,” said he, “when subjects won duchies making war on the king of France. Mr. d’Herblay, if he conspires, shall die on a scaffold. That will or will not please his enemies, little matters to us.”

And this “us,” strange in the mouth of Colbert, made the duchess dream for an instant. She surprised herself counting inwardly with this man.

Colbert had regained the superiority in the interview; he wished to keep it.

“You ask me,” said he, “madame, to have this Mr. d’Herblay arrested?”

“I? I ask you nothing.”

“I thought, madame; but, since I was mistaken, let things take their course. The king has said nothing yet.”

The duchess bit her nails.

“Besides,” continued Colbert, “what a poor prize is the taking of this bishop! King’s game, a bishop! oh! no, no, I shall not even trouble myself with him.”

The hatred of the duchess disclosed itself.

“Woman’s game,” said she, “and the queen is a woman. If she wishes Mr. d’Herblay arrested, it is that she has her reasons. Besides, is not Mr. d’Herblay friend to him who is about to fall in disgrace?”

“Oh! as to that, no matter!” said Colbert. “This man shall be spared, if he is not the enemy of the king. Does that displease you?”

“I say nothing.”

“Yes... you wish to see him in prison, at the Bastille, for example?”

“I believe a secret better hidden behind the walls of the Bastille than behind those of Belle-Île.”

“Stories of the world, in your language.”