Part 33

“Ha! ha!” said the captain to himself, “here are some of the fragments of the letter torn up by M. Fouquet. Poor man! he had given his secret to the wind; the wind wants no more of it and brings it back to the king. Decidedly, poor Fouquet, you are plagued by ill fortune! the game is not equal; fortune is against you. The star of Louis XIV obscures yours; the adder is stronger or more skillful than the squirrel.”

D’Artagnan picked up one of these scraps of paper as he continued downward.

“Gourville’s small handwriting!!” he cried, examining one of the fragments of the note, “I was not mistaken.”

And he read the word *horse*.

“Look at that!” said he.

And he examined another, on which not a letter was traced.

On a third he read the word *white*.

“*White horse*,” he repeated, like a child spelling. “Ah! my God!” cried the suspicious spirit, “white horse!”

And, like that grain of powder which, burning, expands into a hundredfold volume, D’Artagnan, swollen with ideas and suspicions, rapidly remounted toward the terrace.

The white horse ran, still ran, in the direction of the Loire, at the extremity of which, melted into the vapors of the water, a little sail appeared, balanced like an atom.

“Oh! oh!” cried the musketeer, “there is but one man fleeing who runs so fast across plowed lands. There is but one Fouquet, a financier, who runs thus in broad daylight upon a white horse... There is but the lord of Belle-Île who makes for the sea, when there are forests so thick inland... And there is but one D’Artagnan in the world to overtake M. Fouquet, who has half an hour’s start, and who will have joined his boat before an hour is up.”

This said, the musketeer gave order that the iron-latticed carriage be driven at full speed to a clump of woods situated outside the city. He chose his best horse, sprang upon its back, and ran by the rue aux Herbes, taking, not the road Fouquet had taken, but the very bank of the Loire, certain as he was to gain ten minutes on the total distance, and to meet, at the intersection of the two lines, the fugitive who would not suspect being pursued from that side.

In the rapidity of the course, and with the impatience of the persecutor, warming as at the chase, as at war, D’Artagnan, so gentle, so good toward Fouquet, surprised himself becoming ferocious and almost bloodthirsty.

For a long time he ran without catching sight of the white horse; his fury took the hues of rage, he doubted himself, he supposed Fouquet had plunged into some underground path, or that he had relayed the white horse with one of those famous black horses, swift as the wind, whose vigorous lightness D’Artagnan had so often admired and envied at Saint-Mandé.

At such moments, when the wind cut his eyes and made tears start from them, when the saddle burned, when the horse, wounded in its living flesh, roared with pain and sent flying beneath its hind feet a rain of fine sand and pebbles, D’Artagnan, rising in his stirrup, and seeing nothing on the water, nothing under the trees, sought in the air, like a madman. He was going mad. In the paroxysm of his covetousness, he dreamed of aerial roads, discovery of the following century; he recalled Daedalus and his vast wings, which had saved him from the prisons of Crete.

A raucous sigh exhaled from his lips. He repeated, devoured by fear of ridicule:

“I! I! duped by a Gourville, I!... they will say I am growing old, they will say I received a million to let Fouquet escape!”

And he drove both spurs into the horse’s belly; he had just covered a league in two minutes. Suddenly, at the end of a pasture, behind hedges, he saw a white form which showed itself, disappeared, and at last remained visible on higher ground.

D’Artagnan trembled with joy; his mind at once grew calm. He wiped the sweat streaming from his brow, loosened his knees, free of which the horse breathed more fully, and, drawing in the bridle, moderated the pace of the vigorous animal, his accomplice in this man-hunt. He was then able to study the shape of the road, and his position relative to Fouquet.

The superintendent had put his white horse out of breath, crossing the soft lands. He felt the need to gain firmer soil, and made toward the road by the shortest secant.

D’Artagnan had only to go straight under the slope of a cliff which hid him from his enemy’s eyes; so that he would cut him off upon his arrival at the road. There the real race would begin; there the struggle would be established.

D’Artagnan let his horse breathe to the full.

He noticed that the superintendent took the trot, that is to say, he too was letting his mount blow.

But both sides were too pressed to remain long at this pace. The white horse started like an arrow when it touched more resistant ground.

D’Artagnan lowered his hand, and his black horse broke into a gallop. Both followed the same road; the quadruple echoes of the course mingled; M. Fouquet had not yet caught sight of D’Artagnan.

But, at the foot of the slope, a single echo struck the air, that of D’Artagnan’s steps, which rolled like thunder.

Fouquet turned; he saw at a hundred paces behind him, to the rear, his enemy, bent over the neck of his courser. No doubt; the gleaming baldric, the red cassock, it was a musketeer; Fouquet lowered his head likewise, and his white horse put twenty feet more between his adversary and him.

“Oh! but,” thought D’Artagnan uneasily, “that is no ordinary horse Fouquet is riding there, attention!” And, attentive, he examined, with his infallible eye, the pace and the means of that courser.

Round croup, thin and taut tail, legs thin and dry as steel wires, hooves harder than marble.

He spurred his own, but the distance between the two remained the same.

D’Artagnan listened deeply: not a breath of the horse reached him, and yet it clove the wind.

The black horse, on the contrary, began to rattle like a fit of coughing.

“I must kill my horse, but arrive,” thought the musketeer.

And he set to sawing the poor animal’s mouth, while with his spurs he dug into its bleeding skin.

The horse, in despair, gained twenty toises, and came up on Fouquet within pistol shot.

“Courage!” said the musketeer to himself, “courage! the white will perhaps weaken; and, if the horse does not fall, the master will end by falling.”

But horse and man remained upright, united, gradually gaining the advantage.

D’Artagnan uttered a savage cry which made Fouquet turn, whose mount was animating still.

“Famous horse! frantic rider,” growled the captain. “Holà! ’sblood, M. Fouquet, holà! in the king’s name!”

Fouquet did not answer.

“Do you hear me?” roared D’Artagnan.

The horse had just made a false step.

“Pardieu!” replied Fouquet laconically.

And ran on.

D’Artagnan nearly went mad; the blood boiled up boiling to his temples, to his eyes.

“In the king’s name!” he cried again, “stop, or I shoot you down with a pistol.”

“Do so,” answered M. Fouquet still flying.

D’Artagnan seized one of his pistols and cocked it, hoping the noise of the lock would stop his enemy.

“You have pistols too,” said he, “defend yourself.”

Fouquet did indeed turn at the noise, and, looking D’Artagnan full in the face, opened, with his right hand, the coat that gripped his body; he did not touch his holsters.

There were twenty paces between them.

“’Sblood!” said D’Artagnan, “I will not assassinate you; if you will not fire on me, surrender! What is prison?”

“I would rather die,” answered Fouquet; “I shall suffer less.”

D’Artagnan, drunk with despair, threw his pistol on the road.

“I shall take you alive,” said he.

And, by a prodigy of which that incomparable horseman alone was capable, he brought his horse to ten paces from the white horse; already he stretched out his hand to seize his prey.

“Come now, kill me, it is more humane,” said Fouquet.

“No! alive, alive!” murmured the captain.

His horse made a false step for the second time; Fouquet’s gained the lead.

It was an unheard-of spectacle, that race between two horses who lived only by the will of their riders.

To the furious gallop had succeeded the great trot, then the simple trot.

And the course seemed as lively to those two harassed athletes. D’Artagnan, pushed to the limit, seized the second pistol and aimed at the white horse.

“At your horse! not at you!” he cried to Fouquet.

And he fired. The animal was hit in the croup; it made a furious bound and reared.

D’Artagnan’s horse fell dead.

“I am dishonored,” thought the musketeer, “I am a wretch; for pity, M. Fouquet, throw me one of your pistols, that I may blow my brains out!”

Fouquet set off running again.

“For grace! for grace!” cried D’Artagnan, “what you will not do at this moment, I shall do in an hour; but here, on this road, I die bravely, I die esteemed; do me that service, M. Fouquet.”

Fouquet did not answer and continued to trot.

D’Artagnan set to running after his enemy.

Successively he threw upon the ground his hat, his coat, which encumbered him, then his sword scabbard, which beat between his legs.

The sword in hand became too heavy for him, he threw it as he had the scabbard.

The white horse rattled; D’Artagnan gained on him.

From the trot, the exhausted animal passed to a slow walk with vertigoes that shook its head; the blood came to its mouth with the foam.

D’Artagnan made a desperate effort, sprang upon Fouquet, and seized him by the leg saying in a broken, panting voice:

“I arrest you in the king’s name: break my head, we shall both have done our duty.”

Fouquet flung far from him, into the river, the two pistols of which D’Artagnan might have seized hold, and, dismounting:

“I am your prisoner, sir,” said he; “will you take my arm, for you are about to faint?”

“Thanks,” murmured D’Artagnan, who indeed felt the earth fail beneath him and the sky melt upon his head.

And he rolled upon the sand, at end of breath and strength.

Fouquet went down the river bank, drew water in his hat, came to refresh the musketeer’s temples, and slipped a few fresh drops between his lips.

D’Artagnan rose, seeking around him with a wild eye.

He saw Fouquet kneeling, his damp hat in hand and smiling with ineffable gentleness.

“You did not flee!” he cried. “Oh! sir, the true king by loyalty, by heart, by soul, it is not Louis of the Louvre, nor Philippe of Sainte-Marguerite, it is you, the outlaw, the condemned!”

“I who am lost today only by a single fault, M. d’Artagnan.”

“Which, in heaven’s name?”

“I should have had you for a friend. But how shall we do to return to Nantes? We are far from it indeed.”

“That is true,” said D’Artagnan pensively and darkly.

“The white horse will perhaps come back; it was such a good horse! Mount it, M. d’Artagnan; I will go on foot until you are rested.”

“Poor beast! wounded!” said the musketeer.

“It will go, I tell you, I know it; let us do better, let us both mount it.”

“Let us try,” said the captain.

But they had no sooner loaded the animal with that double weight, than it wavered, then recovered and walked some minutes, then staggered again and fell beside the black horse, which it had just rejoined.

“We shall go on foot, fate wills it; the walk will be superb,” resumed Fouquet, passing his arm under that of D’Artagnan.

“’Sblood!” cried the latter, fixed eye, frowning brow, swollen heart. “Ugly day!”

They slowly made the four leagues that separated them from the wood, behind which the carriage waited with an escort.

When Fouquet perceived that sinister machine, he said to D’Artagnan, who lowered his eyes, as if ashamed for Louis XIV:

“That is an idea which is not from a brave man, Captain d’Artagnan, it is not from you. Why these grilles?” said he.

“To prevent you from throwing notes outside.”

“Ingenious!”

“But you can speak if you cannot write,” said D’Artagnan.

“Speak to you!”

“But... if you wish.”

Fouquet dreamed a moment; then, looking the captain full in the face:

“A single word,” said he, “will you keep it?...”

“I will keep it.”

“Will you say it to whom I wish?”

“I will say it.”

“Saint-Mandé!” articulated Fouquet very low.

“Good. For whom?”

“For Mme de Bellière or Pélisson.”

“It is done.”

The carriage crossed Nantes and took the road to Angers.

Chapter CCXLVII — Where the squirrel falls, where the adder flies

It was two in the afternoon. The king, full of impatience, went from his cabinet to the terrace and sometimes opened the corridor door to see what his secretaries were doing.

M. Colbert, seated in the very place where M. de Saint-Aignan had remained so long in the morning, was talking in a low voice with M. de Brienne.

The king abruptly opened the door, and, addressing them:

“What are you saying?” he asked.

“We are speaking of the first session of the States,” said M. de Brienne, rising.

“Very well!” replied the king.

And he went back in.

Five minutes after, the sound of the bell recalled Rose, whose hour it was.

“Have you finished your copies?” asked the king.

“Not yet, Sire.”

“See whether M. d’Artagnan has returned.”

“Not yet, Sire.”

“That is strange!” murmured the king. “Call M. Colbert.”

Colbert entered; he had awaited this moment since morning.

“M. Colbert,” said the king very briskly, “we must nevertheless know what has become of M. d’Artagnan.”

Colbert, in his calm voice:

“Where does the king wish me to have him sought?” said he.

“Eh! sir, do you not know at what place I had sent him?” answered Louis sharply.

“Your Majesty did not tell me.”

“Sir, there are things one guesses, and you above all guess them.”

“I may have supposed, Sire; but I would not have permitted myself to guess entirely.”

Colbert had scarce finished these words, when a voice far rougher than the king’s interrupted the conversation begun between the monarch and the clerk.

“D’Artagnan!” cried the king, quite joyful.

D’Artagnan, pale and of furious humor, said to the king:

“Sire, is it Your Majesty who gave orders to my musketeers?”

“What orders?” said the king.

“Concerning M. Fouquet’s house?”

“None!” replied Louis.

“Ah! ah!” said D’Artagnan, biting his mustache. “I was not mistaken; it is Monsieur.”

And he pointed to Colbert.

“What order? Come now!” said the king.

“Order to overturn a whole house, to beat M. Fouquet’s servants and officers, to force the drawers, to sack a peaceful dwelling; ’sblood! order of a savage!”

“Sir!” said Colbert, very pale.

“Sir,” interrupted D’Artagnan, “the king alone, do you hear, the king alone has the right to command my musketeers; but, as for you, I forbid it, and I tell you so before His Majesty; gentlemen who wear the sword are not knaves with the pen behind the ear.”

“D’Artagnan! D’Artagnan!” murmured the king.

“It is humiliating,” pursued the musketeer; “my soldiers are dishonored. I do not command reiters, or clerks of the intendancy, ’sblood!”

“But what is it? Come now!” said the king with authority.

“It is, Sire, that Monsieur, Monsieur, who could not guess Your Majesty’s orders, and who, consequently, did not know that I was arresting M. Fouquet, Monsieur, who had the iron cage made for his patron of yesterday, dispatched M. de Roncherat into M. Fouquet’s lodging, and that, to carry off the superintendent’s papers, they carried off all the furniture. My musketeers had been around the house since morning. Those are my orders. Why was one permitted to make them enter within? Why, by forcing them to assist at that pillage, were they made accomplices? ’Sblood! we serve the king, we, but we do not serve M. Colbert!”

“M. d’Artagnan,” said the king severely, “take care, it is not in my presence that explanations of this sort, made in that tone, should take place.”

“I acted for the king’s good,” said Colbert in an altered voice; “it is hard for me to be treated thus by an officer of His Majesty, and that without vengeance, because of the respect I owe the king.”

“The respect you owe the king!” cried D’Artagnan, whose eyes flamed, “consists first in making his authority respected, in making his person beloved. Every agent of an uncontrolled power represents that power, and, when the peoples curse the hand that strikes them, it is to the royal hand that God makes reproach, do you hear? Must a soldier hardened for forty years in wounds and blood give you that lesson, sir? must mercy be on my side, ferocity on yours? You have had innocents arrested, bound, imprisoned!”

“The perhaps accomplices of M. Fouquet,” said Colbert.

“Who tells you M. Fouquet has accomplices, and even that he is guilty? The king alone knows, his justice is not blind. When he shall say: ‘Arrest, imprison such persons,’ then one obeys. So speak to me no more of the respect you bear the king, and take care with your words, if by chance they seem to contain some threats, for the king does not let those who serve him well be threatened by those who ill serve him, and, in case I had, which God forbid! a master so ungrateful, I would make myself respected.”

This said, D’Artagnan planted himself proudly in the king’s cabinet, eye aflame, hand on sword, lip trembling, affecting even more anger than he felt.

Colbert, humiliated, devoured with rage, saluted the king, as to ask permission to withdraw.

The king, thwarted in his pride and in his curiosity, yet knew not what part to take. D’Artagnan saw him hesitate. To remain longer would have been a fault; he must obtain a triumph over Colbert, and the only means was to goad the king so well and so hard to the quick, that His Majesty should have no other outlet than to choose between one or the other antagonist.

D’Artagnan, then, bowed like Colbert; but the king, who before all things held to knowing news very exact, very detailed, of the arrest of the superintendent of finances, of him who had made him tremble a moment, the king, understanding that D’Artagnan’s sulking would oblige him to put off by a quarter hour at least the details he burned to know; Louis, we say, forgot Colbert, who had nothing very new to say, and recalled his captain of the musketeers.

“Come now, sir,” said he, “do your errand first, you shall rest after.”

D’Artagnan, who was about to cross the door, stopped at the king’s voice, came back, and Colbert was constrained to leave. His face took a purple hue; his black and wicked eyes shone with a dark fire beneath their thick brows; he lengthened his step, bowed before the king, half straightened in passing before D’Artagnan, and left with death in his heart.

D’Artagnan, left alone with the king, softened at once, and, composing his face:

“Sire,” said he, “you are a young king. It is at dawn that man divines if the day will be fair or sad. How, Sire, shall the peoples that the hand of God has ranged under your law augur of your reign, if, between you and them, you let act ministers of anger and violence? But, let us speak of me, Sire; let us leave a discussion that seems to you idle, unseemly, perhaps. Let us speak of me. I have arrested M. Fouquet.”

“You took your time about it,” said the king with acerbity.

D’Artagnan looked at the king.

“I see I expressed myself ill,” said he. “I announced to Your Majesty that I had arrested M. Fouquet?”

“Yes; well?”

“Well! I should have said to Your Majesty that M. Fouquet had arrested me, that would have been more just. I restore then the truth: I was arrested by M. Fouquet.”

It was Louis XIV’s turn to be surprised. D’Artagnan, with his so prompt glance, appreciated what passed in the master’s mind. He gave him no time to question. He recounted with that poetry, with that picturesque quality that perhaps he alone possessed at that epoch, the evasion of M. Fouquet, the pursuit, the fierce course, finally that inimitable generosity of the superintendent, who could have fled ten times, who could have killed twenty times the adversary attached to his pursuit, and who had preferred prison, and worse yet, perhaps, to the humiliation of him who would have robbed him of his liberty.

As the captain of the musketeers spoke, the king agitated himself, devouring his words and making the tips of his nails click one against another.

“It results then, Sire, in my eyes at least, that a man who conducts himself thus is a gallant gentleman and cannot be an enemy of the king. That is my opinion, I repeat it to Your Majesty. I know the king will say to me, and I bow: ‘Reason of State.’ Be it so! it is to my eyes most respectable. But I am a soldier, I received my orders; the orders are executed, much against my will, true; but they are. I am silent.”

“Where is M. Fouquet at this moment?” asked Louis after a moment of silence.

“M. Fouquet, Sire,” answered D’Artagnan, “is in the iron cage M. Colbert had prepared for him, and rolls at the gallop of four sturdy horses on the road to Angers.”

“Why did you leave him on the road?”

“Because His Majesty had not told me to go to Angers. The proof, the best proof of what I advance, is that the king was seeking me just now... And then I had another reason.”

“Which?”

“Myself being there, that poor M. Fouquet would never have tried to escape.”

“Well?” cried the king with stupefaction.

“Your Majesty must understand, and certainly does understand, that my liveliest desire is to know M. Fouquet at liberty. I gave him to one of my brigadiers, the most clumsy I could find among my musketeers, so that the prisoner might escape.”

“Are you mad, M. d’Artagnan?” cried the king, crossing his arms on his chest; “does one say such enormities when one has the misfortune to think them?”

“Ah! Sire, you do not expect, no doubt, that I should be the enemy of M. Fouquet, after what he has just done for me and for you? No, never give him to me to guard if you care that he remain under lock and key; however well grilled the cage, the bird would end by flying off.”

“I am surprised,” said the king in a dark voice, “that you did not straightway follow the fortune of him whom M. Fouquet wished to set upon my throne. You had there all you need: affection and gratitude. In my service, sir, one finds a master.”

“If M. Fouquet had not gone to fetch you at the Bastille, Sire,” replied D’Artagnan in a strongly accented voice, “a single man would have gone there, and that man is me; you know it well, Sire.”

“Stories of the world, in your language.”