Part 34

— Well then! I accept the twenty thousand livres, for I shall keep this secret, and discretion is priceless in these times. Does Your Majesty wish to speak now?

— You will put on your boots, Monsieur d’Artagnan, and mount your horse.

— At once?

— Within two days.

— Very good, Sire; for I have my affairs to settle before departure, especially if there are blows to be taken.

— That may happen.

— We shall take them. But, Sire, you have spoken to avarice, to ambition; you have spoken to the heart of Monsieur d’Artagnan; you have forgotten one thing.

— Which?

— You have not spoken to vanity: when shall I be knight of the king’s orders?

— Does that concern you?

— But yes. I have my friend Athos who is all bedecked with them, and it offends me.

— You shall be knight of my orders one month after receiving your captain’s commission.

— Ah! ah! said the dreamy officer, after the expedition?

— Precisely.

— Where does Your Majesty send me, then?

— Do you know Brittany?

— No, Sire.

— Have you friends there?

— In Brittany? No, faith!

— So much the better. Are you knowledgeable in fortifications?

D’Artagnan smiled.

— I believe so, Sire.

— That is to say, you can well distinguish a fortress from a simple fortification such as our vassal castellans are permitted?

— I distinguish a fort from a rampart as one distinguishes a cuirass from a pie crust, Sire. Is that sufficient?

— Yes, monsieur. You will therefore depart.

— For Brittany?

— Yes.

— Alone?

— Absolutely alone. That is to say, you may not even take a lackey.

— May I ask Your Majesty for what reason?

— Because, monsieur, you will do well to disguise yourself sometimes as a valet of a good house. Your face is well known in France, Monsieur d’Artagnan.

— And then, Sire?

— And then you will wander through Brittany, and you will carefully examine the fortifications of that country.

— The coasts?

— The islands too.

— Ah!

— You will begin with Belle-Île-en-Mer.

— Which belongs to Monsieur Fouquet? said d’Artagnan in a serious tone, raising his intelligent eye to Louis XIV.

— I believe you are right, monsieur, and that Belle-Île is indeed Monsieur Fouquet’s.

— Then Your Majesty wishes me to know whether Belle-Île is a good place?

— Yes.

— Whether its fortifications are new or old?

— Precisely.

— Whether by chance the vassals of Monsieur the Superintendent are numerous enough to form a garrison?

— That is what I ask of you, monsieur; you have put your finger on the question.

— And if they are not fortifying, Sire?

— You will wander through Brittany, listening and judging.

D’Artagnan scratched his mustache.

— I am the king’s spy, he said bluntly.

— No, monsieur.

— Pardon, Sire, since I spy on behalf of Your Majesty.

— You go on a reconnaissance, monsieur. If you were marching at the head of my musketeers, sword in hand, to scout out some place or a position of the enemy...

At this word, d’Artagnan trembled imperceptibly.

— ... Would you consider yourself a spy, continued the king?

— No, no! said d’Artagnan pensively; the matter changes face when one scouts the enemy; one is but a soldier... And if they are fortifying Belle-Île? he added at once.

— You will take an exact plan of the fortification.

— Will they let me in?

— That is no concern of mine, those are your affairs. Did you not hear that I reserved for you a supplement of twenty thousand livres a year, if you wished?

— Indeed I did, Sire; but if they are not fortifying?

— You will return quietly, without tiring your horse.

— Sire, I am ready.

— You will begin tomorrow by going to Monsieur the Superintendent’s to collect the first quarter of the pension I am granting you. Do you know Monsieur Fouquet?

— Very little, Sire; but I would observe to Your Majesty that it is not very urgent that I know him.

— I beg your pardon, monsieur; for he will refuse you the money I wish you to receive, and it is that refusal I await.

— Ah! said d’Artagnan. After, Sire?

— The money refused, you will go seek it from Monsieur Colbert. By the way, have you a good horse?

— An excellent one, Sire.

— How much did you pay for it?

— A hundred and fifty pistoles.

— I buy it from you. Here is a note for two hundred pistoles.

— But I need a horse to travel, Sire?

— Well?

— Well! you are taking mine.

— Not at all; on the contrary, I give it to you. Only, since it is mine and no longer yours, I am sure you will not spare it.

— Is Your Majesty then in haste?

— Very much.

— Then what forces me to wait two days?

— Two reasons known to me.

— That is different. The horse can make up those two days on the eight it has to travel; and then there is the post.

— No, no, the post compromises enough, Monsieur d’Artagnan. Go and forget not that you are mine.

— Sire, it is not I who ever forgot it! At what hour shall I take leave of Your Majesty the day after tomorrow?

— Where do you lodge?

— Thenceforth I am to lodge at the Louvre.

— I do not wish it. You will keep your lodging in the city, I will pay for it. For the departure, I fix it at night, seeing that you must leave without being seen by anyone, or if seen, without it being known that you are mine... Lips sealed, monsieur.

— Your Majesty spoils all she has said with that single word.

— I asked you where you lodge, for I cannot always send for you at the Count de La Fère’s.

— I lodge at Monsieur Planchet’s, grocer, rue des Lombards, at the sign of the Golden Pestle.

— Go out little, show yourself even less, and await my orders.

— I must go collect, however, Sire.

— True; but to go to the Superintendent’s, where so many go, you will mingle with the crowd.

— I lack the notes to collect, Sire.

— Here they are.

The king signed.

D’Artagnan looked to assure himself of their regularity.

— It is money, he said, and money is read or counted.

— Farewell, Monsieur d’Artagnan, added the king; I think you have well understood me?

— I have understood that Your Majesty sends me to Belle-Île-en-Mer, that is all.

— To know?...

— To know how Monsieur Fouquet’s works go; that is all.

— Good; I admit you may be taken?

— I, for one, do not admit it, replied the Gascon boldly.

— I admit you may be killed? pursued the king.

— That is not likely, Sire.

— In the first case, you speak not; in the second, no paper speaks on your person.

D’Artagnan shrugged his shoulders without ceremony, and took leave of the king, saying to himself: “The rain of England continues! let us stay under the gutter.”

Chapter LIV — Monsieur Fouquet’s Houses

While d’Artagnan returned to Planchet’s, his head bewildered and heavy with all that had just befallen him, a scene of a wholly different kind was taking place, which nevertheless is not unrelated to the conversation our musketeer had just had with the king. Only, this scene was occurring outside Paris, in a house the Superintendent Fouquet possessed in the village of Saint-Mandé.

The minister had just arrived at this country house, followed by his chief clerk, who carried an enormous portfolio full of papers to examine and others awaiting signature. As it might be five in the evening, the masters had dined, supper was being prepared for twenty subordinate guests. The Superintendent did not stop on descending from the carriage. With the same bound he crossed the threshold, traversed the apartments, and gained his study, where he declared he was locking himself in to work, forbidding that he be disturbed for anything whatsoever, except by order of the king.

Indeed, as soon as this order was given, Fouquet locked himself in, and two footmen were placed as sentinels at his door.

Then Fouquet shot a bolt, which displaced a panel that walled up the entrance, and prevented anything that passed in this study from being seen or heard. But contrary to all probability, it was indeed to lock himself in that Fouquet thus enclosed himself; for he went straight to his desk, sat down, opened the portfolio, and began to make a selection in the enormous mass of papers it contained. He had not been inside ten minutes, and all the precautions we have described had been taken, when the repeated noise of several small equal taps struck his ear, and seemed to call all his attention.

Fouquet raised his head, lent his ear, and listened. The small taps continued. Then the worker rose with a slight movement of impatience, and walked straight to a mirror behind which the taps were struck by an invisible hand or mechanism.

It was a large mirror set in a panel. Three other absolutely similar mirrors completed the symmetry of the apartment.

Nothing distinguished that one from the others. Beyond doubt, these reiterated small taps were a signal; for at the moment Fouquet approached the mirror listening, the same noise renewed itself and in the same measure.

— Oh! oh! murmured the Superintendent with surprise; who then is there yonder? I expected no one today.

And, doubtless to answer the signal that had been made, the Superintendent drew a gilded nail in that same mirror and shook it three times. Then, returning to his place and reseating himself:

— My faith, let them wait, said he.

And plunging again into the ocean of paper unrolled before him, he appeared to think only of work. Indeed, with an incredible rapidity, a marvelous lucidity, Fouquet deciphered the longest papers, the most complicated writings, correcting them, annotating them with a pen carried away as by fever, and the work melting between his fingers, the signatures, the figures, the cross-references multiplied as if ten clerks, that is to say a hundred fingers and ten brains, had functioned, instead of five fingers and the single mind of this man.

Only from time to time, Fouquet, absorbed in this work, raised his head to cast a furtive glance at a clock placed opposite him.

That was because Fouquet set himself his task; because, this task once set, in one hour of work he did what another would not have accomplished in his day: always certain, consequently, provided he were not disturbed, of reaching the goal within the time his devouring activity had fixed. But, in the midst of this ardent work, the dry taps of the small bell placed behind the mirror sounded again, more urgent, and consequently more pressing.

— Come, it seems the lady grows impatient, said Fouquet; let us see, let us see, calm, it must be the Countess; but no, the Countess is at Rambouillet for three days. The Presidente, then. Oh! the Presidente would not take on such grand airs; she would ring quite humbly, then await my good pleasure. The clearest of all this is that I cannot know who it may be, but that I well know who it is not. And since it is not you, Marquise, since it cannot be you, the devil take all others!

And he pursued his task, despite the reiterated calls of the bell. However, at the end of a quarter of an hour, impatience seized Fouquet in turn; he burned rather than finished the rest of his work, thrust his papers back into the portfolio, and casting a glance at his mirror, while the small taps continued more urgent than ever:

— Oh! oh! said he, whence comes this fervor? What has happened, and what Ariadne awaits me with such impatience? Let us see.

Then he pressed the tip of his finger on the nail parallel to the one he had drawn. At once the mirror moved like the leaf of a door and disclosed a rather deep closet, into which the Superintendent disappeared as into a vast box. There, he pushed a new spring, which opened, not a plank, but a block of wall, and he exited by this trench, leaving the door to close of itself.

Then Fouquet descended some twenty steps that sank spiraling under the earth, and found a long vaulted passage paved and lit by imperceptible loopholes. The walls of this passage were covered with flagstones, and the floor with carpets. This passage passed under the very street that separated Fouquet’s house from the park of Vincennes. At the end of the passage spiraled a staircase parallel to that by which Fouquet had descended. He climbed this other staircase, entered by means of a spring placed in a closet similar to that of his study, and, from this closet, passed into a completely empty chamber, though furnished with supreme elegance.

Once entered, he carefully examined whether the mirror closed without leaving a trace, and, content no doubt with his observation, he went to open, by means of a small vermeil key, the triple turns of a door situated opposite him.

This time, the door opened onto a handsome cabinet furnished sumptuously and in which, seated on cushions, was a woman of supreme beauty, who, at the noise of the bolts, precipitated herself toward Fouquet.

— Ah! my God! cried he, recoiling in astonishment: Madame la Marquise de Bellière, you, you here!

— Yes, murmured the Marquise; yes, I, monsieur.

— Marquise, dear Marquise, added Fouquet ready to prostrate himself. Ah! my God! but how then did you come? And I who made you wait!

— Very long, monsieur, oh! yes, very long.

— Am I fortunate enough that this wait has seemed long to you, Marquise?

— An eternity, monsieur; oh! I rang more than twenty times; did you not hear?

— Marquise, you are pale, you are trembling.

— Did you then not hear that you were being called?

— Oh! indeed, I heard well, madame; but I could not come. How suppose it was you, after your rigors, after your refusals? If I could have suspected the happiness awaiting me, believe me, Marquise, I would have quit all to come fall at your knees, as I do at this moment.

The Marquise looked around her.

— Are we quite alone, monsieur? she asked.

— Oh! yes, madame, I assure you of it.

— Indeed, said the Marquise sadly.

— You sigh?

— What mysteries, what precautions, said the Marquise with a slight bitterness and as one sees that you fear to let your loves be suspected!

— Would you prefer I advertised them?

— Oh! no, and that is of a delicate man, said the Marquise smiling.

— Come, come, Marquise, no reproaches, I beg you!

— Reproaches, have I the right to make you any?

— No, unhappily no; but, tell me, you, whom for a year I have loved without return and without hope...

— You are mistaken: without hope, true; but without return, no.

— Oh! for me, of love there is but one proof, and that proof, I still await it.

— I come to bring it you, monsieur.

Fouquet would have encircled the Marquise with his arms, but she disengaged herself with a gesture.

— Will you then always mistake, monsieur, and will you not accept from me the only thing I wish to give you, devotion?

— Ah! you do not love me, then; devotion is but a virtue, love is a passion.

— Listen to me, monsieur, I beg you; I would not have come here without a grave motive, you understand it well.

— Little matters the motive, since you are here, since I speak to you, since I see you.

— Yes, you are right, the principal thing is that I am here, without anyone having seen me, and that I can speak to you.

Fouquet let himself fall to both knees.

— Speak, speak, madame, said he, I listen to you.

The Marquise looked at Fouquet at her knees, and there was in the glances of this woman a strange expression of love and melancholy.

— Oh! murmured she at last, how I would wish to be she who has the right to see you every minute, to speak to you every instant! How I would wish to be she who watches over you, she who has no need of mysterious springs to call, to make appear like a sylph the man she loves, to gaze at him an hour, and then see him disappear into the shadows, by a mystery yet stranger at his exit than it was at his arrival. Oh!... she is a happy woman.

— By chance, Marquise, said Fouquet smiling, would you be speaking of my wife?

— Yes, certainly, I speak of her.

— Well! envy not her lot, Marquise; of all the women with whom I am in relations, Madame Fouquet is she who sees me least, who speaks to me least, and who has fewest confidences with me.

— At least, monsieur, she is not reduced to pressing, as I have done, her hand on a glass ornament to make you come; at least you do not answer her by that mysterious, frightening noise of a bell whose spring comes I know not whence; at least you have never forbidden her to seek to pierce the secret of these communications, on pain of seeing your connection with her broken forever, as you forbid those who have come here before me and who will come after me.

— Ah! dear Marquise, how unjust you are and how little you know what you do in recriminating against mystery! it is with mystery only that one can love without trouble, it is with trouble-free love that one can be happy. But let us return to you, to that devotion of which you spoke to me, or rather deceive me, Marquise, and let me believe that this devotion is love.

— Presently, resumed the Marquise passing over her eyes that hand modeled on the most suave contours of antiquity, presently I was ready to speak, my ideas were clear, bold; now, I am all abashed, all troubled, all trembling; I fear to come bring you bad news.

— If it is to this bad news that I owe your presence, Marquise, may that bad news be welcome; or rather, Marquise, since you are here, since you confess to me that I am not quite indifferent to you, let us set aside this bad news, and speak only of you.

— No, no, on the contrary, ask it of me; require that I tell it you instantly, that I let myself be diverted by no feeling; Fouquet, my friend, a vast interest is at stake.

— You astonish me, Marquise; I would even say more, you almost frighten me, you so serious, so reflective, you who know so well the world we live in. It is then grave.

— Oh! very grave, listen!

— First, how did you come here?

— You shall know presently; but first, to the most pressing.

— Speak, Marquise, speak! I beg you, take pity on my impatience.

— You know that Monsieur Colbert is named Intendant of Finances?

— Bah! Colbert, little Colbert?

— Yes, Colbert, little Colbert.

— The factotum of Monsieur de Mazarin?

— Exactly.

— Well! what do you see there that is frightening, dear Marquise? Little Colbert intendant, is astonishing, I grant, but is not terrible.

— Do you believe the king gave, without pressing motives, such a place to him you call a little pedant?

— First, is it quite true the king gave it him?

— It is said.

— Who says it?

— Everyone.

— Everyone, is no one; cite me someone who may be well informed and who says it.

— Madame Vanel.

— Ah! you begin indeed to frighten me, said Fouquet laughing; the fact is that if anyone is well informed, or should be well informed, it is the person you name.

— Speak not ill of poor Marguerite, Monsieur Fouquet, for she still loves you.

— Bah! truly? That is hardly to be believed. I thought that this little Colbert, as you said but now, had got above that love and stained it with an inkblot or a layer of grease.

— Fouquet, Fouquet, is that then how you are with those you abandon?

— Come, will you not take the defense of Madame Vanel, Marquise?

— Yes, I will take it; for, I repeat to you, she still loves you, and the proof is that she saves you.

— By your mediation, Marquise; it is clever of her. No angel could be more agreeable to me, and lead me more surely to safety. But first, how do you know Marguerite?

— She is my convent friend.

— And you say then she announced to you that Monsieur Colbert is named intendant?

— Yes.

— Well! enlighten me, Marquise; there is Monsieur Colbert intendant, be it so. In what can an intendant, that is to say my subordinate, my clerk, harm or prejudice me, were it Monsieur Colbert?

— You do not reflect, monsieur, it appears, answered the Marquise.

— On what?

— On this: that Monsieur Colbert hates you.

— Me! cried Fouquet. Eh! my God! Marquise, where do you come from then? But, everyone hates me, that one like the others.

— That one more than the others.

— More than the others, be it.

— He is ambitious.

— Who is not, Marquise?

— Yes; but in him his ambition has no bound.

— I see it well, since he has striven to succeed me with Madame Vanel.

— And succeeded; take care.

— Would you say he pretends to pass from intendant to superintendent?

— Have you not already had that fear?

— Oh! oh! made Fouquet, to succeed me with Madame Vanel, so be it; but with the king, that is another matter. France is not bought so easily as the wife of a master of accounts.

— Eh! monsieur, everything is bought; when not by gold, it is by intrigue.

— You know the contrary well, you, madame, to whom I have offered millions.

— It would have been needful, instead of those millions, Fouquet, to offer me a true love, unique, absolute; I would have accepted. You see well everything is bought, if not in one way, then in another.

— Thus Monsieur Colbert, in your opinion, is bargaining for my place of Superintendent? Come, come, Marquise, reassure yourself, he is not yet rich enough to buy it.

— But if he steals it from you?

— Ah! this is another thing. Unhappily, before arriving at me, that is to say at the body of the place, he must destroy, he must breach the advanced works, and I am devilishly well fortified, Marquise.

— And what you call your advanced works, are they your creatures, are they not, are they your friends?

— Exactly.

— And is Monsieur d’Eymeris of your creatures?

— Yes.

— Is Monsieur Lyodot of your friends?

— Certainly.

— Monsieur de Vanin?

— Oh! Monsieur de Vanin, let them do with him what they will, but...

— But?...

— But let them not touch the others.

— Well! if you would have them not touch Messieurs d’Eymeris and Lyodot, it is time to set about it.

— Who threatens them?

— Will you hear me now?

— Always, Marquise.

— Without interrupting me?

— Speak.

— Well! this morning, Marguerite sent for me.

— Ah!

— Yes.

— And what did she want of you?

— “I dare not see Monsieur Fouquet myself,” she said to me.

— Bah! why? does she think I would have reproached her? Poor woman, she is much mistaken, my God!

— “See him, you, and tell him to guard himself against Monsieur de Colbert.”

— How, she has me warned to guard myself against her lover?

— I told you she still loves you.

— After, Marquise?

“Stories of the world, in your language.”