Part 31

— I will speak of it to the king, who will clear up the point.

— While awaiting the explanation, sir, the Bishop of Vannes will have fled. I should do the same.

— Fled! he! and where would he flee? Europe is ours, by will if not by fact.

— He will always find an asylum, sir. One sees plainly that you know not with whom you have to deal. You do not know M. d'Herblay; you never knew Aramis. He was one of those four musketeers who, under the late king, made Cardinal Richelieu tremble, and who, during the Regency, gave M. de Mazarin so much trouble.

— But, madame, how will he manage, unless he has a kingdom of his own?

— He has one, sir.

— A kingdom of his own, M. d'Herblay?

— I repeat to you, sir, that if he needs a kingdom, he has one or will have one.

— In short, since you take so great an interest in his not escaping, madame, I assure you this rebel shall not escape.

— Belle-Île is fortified, M. Colbert, and fortified by him.

— Were Belle-Île defended by him ever so strongly, Belle-Île is not impregnable; and if the Bishop of Vannes is shut up in Belle-Île, well then, madame, we will lay siege to the place and take him.

— You may be very certain, sir, that the zeal you display for the interests of the queen mother will touch His Majesty deeply, and that you will have a magnificent reward; but what shall I tell him of your designs upon this man?

— That once taken he will be buried in a fortress from which his secret shall never come forth.

— Very well, M. Colbert, and we may say that from this moment we have made a solid alliance, you and I, and that I am entirely at your service.

— It is I, madame, who place myself at yours. This Chevalier d'Herblay, he is a spy of Spain, is he not?

— Better than that.

— A secret ambassador?

— Go higher.

— Wait... King Philip III is devout. It is... the confessor of Philip III?

— Higher still.

— God's death! cried Colbert, forgetting himself so far as to swear in the presence of this great lady, this old friend of the queen mother, the Duchess of Chevreuse, in short. Then it is the general of the Jesuits?

— I believe you have guessed, replied the duchess.

— Ah! madame, then this man will ruin us all if we do not ruin him, and even then we must make haste!

— That is my opinion, sir; but I dared not tell you so.

— And we were lucky that he attacked the throne instead of attacking us.

— But note this well, M. Colbert: M. d'Herblay never loses heart, and if he has missed his blow, he will begin again. If he let slip the chance to make himself a king, he will sooner or later make another, of whom assuredly you will not be the first minister.

Colbert frowned with a threatening expression.

— I count upon prison to settle this affair in a manner satisfactory to us both, madame.

The duchess smiled.

— If you knew, she said, how many times Aramis has escaped from prison!

— Oh! replied Colbert, we will see to it that he does not escape this time.

— But have you not heard what I told you just now? Do you not remember that Aramis was one of the four invincibles whom Richelieu feared? And at that time the four musketeers had not what they have today: money and experience.

Colbert bit his lips.

— We will give up the prison, he said in a lower tone. We will find a retreat from which the invincible cannot escape.

— That's the way, our ally! answered the duchess. But it is growing late; are we not going in?

— The more willingly, madame, since I have my preparations to make for departing with the king.

— To Paris! cried the duchess to the coachman.

And the carriage returned toward the Faubourg Saint-Antoine after the conclusion of this treaty which delivered to death the last friend of Fouquet, the last defender of Belle-Île, the former friend of Marie Michon, the new enemy of the duchess.

Chapter CCXLIII — The Two Barges

D'Artagnan had departed: Fouquet also had departed, and he with a rapidity doubled by the tender interest of his friends.

The first moments of this journey, or, to speak more accurately, of this flight, were troubled by the incessant fear of every horse, of every carriage that was glimpsed behind the fugitive.

It was not natural, indeed, that Louis XIV, if he wanted this prey, should let it escape; the young lion already knew the hunt, and he had hounds eager enough to rely upon.

But, by degrees, all fears vanished; the superintendent, by dint of running, put such a distance between himself and his pursuers that, reasonably, none could reach him. As for his bearing, his friends had given him an excellent one. Was he not traveling to join the king at Nantes, and did not this very speed bear witness to his zeal?

He arrived tired but reassured at Orléans, where he found, thanks to the care of a courier who had gone ahead, a fine barge with eight oarsmen.

These barges, shaped like gondolas, somewhat broad, somewhat heavy, containing a small cabin roofed over like a deck and a stern cabin formed by a tent, then did the service from Orléans to Nantes by the Loire; and this passage, long in our days, then seemed sweeter and more convenient than the high road with its post hackneys or its barely suspended bad carriages. Fouquet went aboard this barge, which departed at once. The oarsmen, knowing they had the honor of conveying the superintendent of finances, plied their oars with all their might, and this magic word, finances, promised them some good gratuity of which they wished to prove themselves worthy.

The barge flew over the waves of the Loire. A magnificent weather, one of those rising suns which redden the landscapes, left to the river all its limpid serenity. The current and the oars bore Fouquet as wings bear the bird; he arrived before Beaugency without any accident having marked the voyage.

Fouquet hoped to arrive the first of all at Nantes; there he would see the notables and give himself a support among the principal members of the Estates; he would render himself necessary, an easy thing for a man of his merit, and would delay the catastrophe, if he did not succeed in avoiding it entirely.

— Besides, Gourville said to him, at Nantes you will divine, or we will divine, the intentions of your enemies; we will have horses ready to gain the inextricable Poitou, a boat to gain the sea, and, once at sea, Belle-Île is the inviolable port. You see, moreover, that no one lies in wait for you and that no one follows us.

He had scarcely finished when they discovered from afar, behind a bend formed by the river, the mast of an important barge which was descending.

The oarsmen of Fouquet's boat uttered a cry of surprise at seeing this barge.

— What is it? asked Fouquet.

— It is, my lord, replied the patron of the boat, that it is a truly extraordinary thing, and that this barge moves like a hurricane.

Gourville started and mounted upon the deck to see better.

Fouquet did not mount; but he said to Gourville with a contained distrust:

— See what it is, my dear.

The barge had just passed the bend. It swam so fast that behind it one saw tremble the white wake of its track, lit by the fires of day.

— How they go! repeated the patron, how they go! it seems the pay is good. I did not believe, added the patron, that oars of wood could behave better than ours; but there are some yonder that prove the contrary to me.

— I should think so! cried one of the oarsmen; they are twelve and we are but eight.

— Twelve! said Gourville, twelve oarsmen? Impossible!

The number of eight oarsmen, for a barge, had never been exceeded, even for the king.

This honor had been done to the superintendent much more from haste than from respect.

— What does that mean? said Gourville, trying to distinguish, under the tent, already visible, the travelers whom the most subtle eye had not yet succeeded in recognizing.

— They must be in a hurry! For it is not the king, said the patron.

Fouquet shuddered.

— How do you see that it is not the king? said Gourville.

— First, because there is no white flag with fleurs-de-lis, which the royal barge always carries.

— And next, said M. Fouquet, because it is impossible that it should be the king, Gourville, seeing that the king was still yesterday at Paris.

Gourville answered the superintendent with a look which signified: "You were there yourself."

— And how is it seen that they are in haste? added he to gain time.

— By this, sir, said the patron, that those people must have departed long after us, and that they have caught up with us, or nearly.

— Bah! said Gourville, who told you they did not depart from Beaugency or from Niort itself?

— We have seen no barge of that strength, save at Orléans. It comes from Orléans, sir, and is making haste.

M. Fouquet and Gourville exchanged a glance.

The patron remarked this uneasiness. Gourville at once to mislead him:

— Some friend, said he, who has wagered to catch us up; let us win the wager, and let us not be overtaken.

The patron was opening his mouth to reply that it was impossible, when M. Fouquet, with haughtiness:

— If it is someone who wishes to join us, said he, let him come.

— One might try, my lord, said the patron timidly. Come, you there, put your backs into it! row!

— No, said M. Fouquet, stop short, on the contrary.

— My lord, what madness! interrupted Gourville, leaning to his ear.

— Short! repeated M. Fouquet. The eight oars stopped, and, resisting the water, imparted a retrograde motion to the barge. It was stopped.

The twelve oarsmen of the other did not at first distinguish this maneuver, for they continued to launch the skiff so vigorously that it arrived at most within musket range. M. Fouquet had weak sight; Gourville was bothered by the sun, which struck his eyes; the patron alone, with that habit and clearness which the struggle against the elements gives, distinctly perceived the travelers of the neighboring barge.

— I see them! he cried, they are two.

— I see nothing, said Gourville.

— You will not be long in distinguishing them; in a few strokes of the oar they will be twenty paces from us.

But what the patron announced was not realized; the barge imitated the movement commanded by M. Fouquet, and, instead of coming to join its pretended friends, it stopped short in the middle of the river.

— I understand nothing more of it, said the patron.

— Nor I, said Gourville.

— You who see so well the people who steer this barge, resumed M. Fouquet, try to picture them to us, patron, before we are too far off.

— I thought I saw two, answered the boatman, I see but one now under the tent.

— What is he like?

— He is a dark man, broad of shoulder, short of neck.

A little cloud passed in the azure of the sky, and came, at that moment, to mask the sun.

Gourville, who was still looking, a hand upon his eyes, could see what he sought, and, suddenly, jumping from the deck into the cabin where Fouquet awaited him:

— Colbert! he said to him in a voice altered by emotion.

— Colbert? repeated Fouquet. Oh! this is strange; but no, it is impossible!

— I recognize him, I tell you, and he himself recognized me so well that he has just gone into the stern cabin. Perhaps the king sends him to make us return.

— In that case, he would join us instead of remaining in irons. What is he doing there?

— He is watching us no doubt, my lord?

— I do not like uncertainties, cried Fouquet; let us go straight to him.

— Oh! my lord, do not do that! the barge is full of armed men.

— He would arrest me then, Gourville? Why does he not come, then?

— My lord, it is not worthy of your dignity to go meet even your ruin.

— But to suffer myself to be watched like a malefactor?

— Nothing says you are watched, my lord; be patient.

— What to do, then?

— Do not stop; you were going as fast as to appear to obey the king's orders with zeal. Redouble your speed. He who lives will see!

— That is right. Come! cried Fouquet, since they remain still yonder, let us go, we.

The patron gave the signal, and Fouquet's oarsmen resumed their exercise with all the success one could expect from rested men.

Scarcely had the barge made a hundred fathoms than the other, the one with twelve oars, set forth again likewise.

This race lasted all day, without the distance growing or diminishing between the two equipages.

Toward evening, Fouquet wished to try the intentions of his persecutor. He ordered the oarsmen to pull toward the shore as if to effect a landing.

Colbert's barge imitated this maneuver and bore toward the land obliquely.

By the greatest of chances, at the spot where Fouquet made show of disembarking, a stable valet from the château of Langeais followed the flowery bank leading three horses by the halter. Doubtless the men of the twelve-oared barge believed that Fouquet was directing himself toward horses prepared for his flight; for one saw four or five men, armed with muskets, leap from this barge to land and march upon the bank, as if to gain ground on the horses and the rider.

Fouquet, satisfied at having forced the enemy to a demonstration, took the hint, and began again to move his boat.

Colbert's men remounted theirs at once, and the race between the two equipages resumed with a new perseverance.

Seeing which, Fouquet felt himself threatened closely, and, in a prophetic voice:

— Well! Gourville, said he very low, what did I say to you at our last meal, at my house? am I or am I not going to my ruin?

— Oh! my lord.

— These two boats which follow one another with as much emulation as if M. Colbert and I were disputing a prize of speed upon the Loire, do they not represent well our two fortunes, and do you not believe, Gourville, that one of the two will be wrecked at Nantes?

— At least, objected Gourville, there is still uncertainty; you are going to appear before the Estates, you are going to show what man you are; your eloquence and your genius in affairs are the shield and the sword which will serve you to defend yourself, if not to conquer. The Bretons know you not, and, when they know you, your cause is won. Oh! let M. Colbert beware, for his barge is as exposed as yours to overturning. The two go fast, his more than yours, it is true; one will see which arrives first at the shipwreck.

Fouquet, taking Gourville's hand:

— Friend, said he, it is all judged; remember the proverb: The first go before. Well! Colbert will take care not to pass me! He is a prudent man, Colbert.

He was right; the two barges sailed to Nantes, watching one another; when the superintendent landed, Gourville hoped he could at once seek his refuge and have relays prepared.

But, on disembarking, the second barge rejoined the first, and Colbert, approaching Fouquet, saluted him upon the quay with marks of the deepest respect.

Marks so significant, so noisy, that they had for result the making of a whole population come running upon the Fosse.

Fouquet possessed himself completely; he felt that in his last moments of greatness he had obligations toward himself.

He wished to fall from so high that his fall might crush some of his enemies.

Colbert was there; so much the worse for Colbert.

Also the superintendent, drawing near him, answered with that arrogant twinkling of the eyes which was peculiar to him:

— What! is it you, M. Colbert?

— To render you my homages, my lord, said the latter.

— You were in that barge?

He pointed to the famous boat with twelve oars.

— Yes, my lord.

— With twelve oars? said Fouquet. What luxury, M. Colbert! For a moment I thought it was the queen mother or the king.

— My lord...

And Colbert reddened.

— That is a voyage which will cost dear to those who pay for it, M. the intendant, said Fouquet. But, in short, you have arrived. You see well, he added a moment after, that I, who had no more than eight oars, arrived before you.

And he turned his back on him, leaving him uncertain whether really all the tergiversations of the second barge had escaped the first.

At least he did not give him the satisfaction of showing that he had been afraid.

Colbert, so disagreeably shaken, was not discouraged; he replied:

— I did not go fast, my lord, because I stopped each time you stopped.

— And why is that, M. Colbert? cried Fouquet, irritated by this base boldness; why, since you had an equipage superior to mine, did you not join me or pass me?

— Out of respect, said the intendant, who bowed to the ground.

Fouquet mounted a carriage which the city sent him, one knows not why nor how, and he betook himself to the Maison de Nantes, escorted by a great crowd which, for several days, had been boiling in expectation of a convocation of the Estates.

Scarcely was he installed than Gourville went out to have horses prepared on the road to Poitiers and Vannes and a boat at Paimbœuf.

He did these different operations with so much mystery, activity, and generosity, that never was Fouquet, then wrought upon by his fit of fever, nearer to safety, save for the cooperation of that immense agitator of human projects: chance.

The rumor spread in the city, that night, that the king was coming in great haste upon post horses, and that he would arrive in ten or twelve hours.

The people, awaiting the king, rejoiced greatly to see the musketeers, freshly arrived with M. d'Artagnan, their captain, and quartered in the castle, which they occupied all posts of as guard of honor.

M. d'Artagnan, who was very polite, presented himself about ten o'clock at the superintendent's, to offer him his respectful homages, and, although the minister had fever, although he was unwell and bathed in sweat, he wished to receive M. d'Artagnan, who was charmed at this honor, as will be seen by the interview they had together.

Chapter CCXLIV — Friendly Counsel

Fouquet had gone to bed, like a man who clings to life and economizes as much as possible that slight tissue of existence, whose shocks and angles of this world so quickly wear away the irreparable thinness.

D'Artagnan appeared upon the threshold of the chamber and was greeted by the superintendent with a very affable good day.

— Good day, my lord, replied the musketeer; how do you find yourself after this journey?

— Rather well. Thank you.

— And the fever?

— Rather badly. I drink, as you see. Scarcely arrived, I laid a contribution of tisane upon Nantes.

— You must sleep first, my lord.

— Eh! zounds! dear M. d'Artagnan, I would sleep willingly enough...

— What prevents you?

— But you, first.

— Me? Ah! My lord!...

— Doubtless. Is it not, at Nantes as at Paris, that you come in the name of the king?

— For God's sake! my lord, replied the captain, leave the king in peace! The day I come from the king for what you mean to tell me, I promise you I will not keep you lingering. You will see me lay hand to sword, according to ordinance, and you will hear me say at the first blow, in my ceremony voice: "My lord, in the name of the king, I arrest you."

Fouquet started in spite of himself, so natural and vigorous had been the accent of the witty Gascon. The representation of the fact was almost as frightful as the fact itself.

— You promise me this frankness? said the superintendent.

— On my honor! But we are not there, believe me.

— What makes you think that, M. d'Artagnan? I believe the contrary.

— I have heard speak of nothing whatsoever, replied D'Artagnan.

— Eh! eh! said Fouquet.

— But no, you are an agreeable man, despite your fever. The king cannot, must not help but love you at heart.

Fouquet made a grimace.

— But M. Colbert? said he. Does M. Colbert love me as much as you say?

— I speak not of M. Colbert, resumed D'Artagnan. He is an exceptional man, that one! He does not love you, that is possible; but, by God! the squirrel can guard himself from the snake, if he but wish it a little.

— You must know you speak to me as a friend, replied Fouquet, and that, upon my life! I have never found a man of your wit and your heart?

— That pleases you to say, said D'Artagnan. You wait until today to pay me such a compliment?

— Blind that we are! murmured Fouquet.

— There is your voice growing hoarse, said D'Artagnan. Drink, my lord, drink.

And he offered him a cup of tisane with the most cordial friendship; Fouquet took it and thanked him with a good smile.

— Such things happen only to me, said the musketeer. I passed ten years under your beard when you stirred tons of gold; you made four millions of pension a year, you never remarked me; and here you perceive that I am in the world, precisely at the moment...

— Where I am going to fall, interrupted Fouquet. That is true, dear M. d'Artagnan.

— I do not say that.

— You think it, that is all. Well! if I fall, take my word for true, I will not pass a day without saying to myself, striking my head: "Fool! fool! stupid mortal! You had M. d'Artagnan at hand, and you did not make use of him! and you did not enrich him!"

— You overwhelm me! said the captain; I am wild about you.

— Another man who does not think like M. Colbert, said the superintendent.

— How this Colbert sticks to your sides! It is worse than your fever.

— Ah! I have my reasons, said Fouquet. Judge them.

And he told him the details of the race of the barges and the hypocritical persecution of Colbert.

— Is not that the best sign of my ruin?

D'Artagnan became serious.

— That is just, said he. Yes, that smells bad, as M. de Tréville used to say.

And he fixed upon Fouquet his intelligent and significant gaze.

— Is it not, captain, that I am well marked out? Is it not that the king brings me to Nantes to isolate me from Paris, where I have so many creatures, and to seize Belle-Île?

— Where is M. d'Herblay, added D'Artagnan.

Fouquet lifted his head.

— As for me, my lord, pursued D'Artagnan, I can assure you that the king has said nothing to me against you.

— Truly?

— The king commanded me to set out for Nantes, it is true; to say nothing of it to M. de Gesvres.

— My friend.

— To M. de Gesvres, yes, my lord, continued the musketeer, whose eyes never ceased to speak a language opposite to that of the lips. The king commanded me further to take a brigade of the musketeers, which is superfluous in appearance, since the country is calm.

— A brigade? said Fouquet, raising himself on one elbow.

— Ninety-six horsemen, yes, my lord, the same number as was taken to arrest MM. de Chalais, de Cinq-Mars, and Montmorency.

Fouquet pricked up his ears at these words, pronounced with no apparent weight.

— And then? said he.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”