Part 33
“The king was struck this evening by a strange blow: a woman loves him. He learned it by chance while overhearing this young girl’s conversation with her companions. So that the king is wholly given over to this new whim. The woman is called Mlle de La Vallière and is of rather mediocre beauty, enough for this whim to become a great passion. Beware of Mlle de La Vallière.”
Not a word about Madame.
Aramis slowly folded the note and put it in his pocket.
As for Fouquet, he was still savoring the perfumes of his letter.
“My lord!” said Aramis, touching Fouquet’s arm.
“Eh!” said the latter.
“An idea comes to me. Do you know a little girl they call La Vallière?”
“Upon my word! no.”
“Think carefully.”
“Ah! yes, I believe so, one of Madame’s maids of honor.”
“That must be it.”
“Well! and then?”
“Well! my lord, it is to this little girl that you must pay a visit this evening.”
“Nonsense! and how?”
“And, moreover, it is to this little girl that you must give your cameos.”
“Come now!”
“You know, my lord, that I give good counsel.”
“But this unforeseen…”
“That is my affair. Quickly, a proper court paid to little La Vallière, my lord. I shall make myself guarantor with Mme de Bellière that it is a purely political court.”
“What are you saying there, my friend,” cried Fouquet sharply, “and what name did you just pronounce?”
“A name that should prove to you, Monsieur the Superintendent, that, well informed for you, I may be as well informed for others. Pay court to little La Vallière.”
“I shall pay court to whomever you wish,” replied Fouquet, with paradise in his heart.
“Come, come, descend back to earth, traveler of the seventh heaven,” said Aramis; “here is M. de Colbert. Oh! but he has recruited while we were reading; he is surrounded, praised, congratulated; decidedly, he is a power.”
Indeed, Colbert advanced escorted by all that remained of courtiers in the gardens, and each paid him compliments on the ordering of the fête, at which he swelled near to bursting.
“If La Fontaine were here,” said Fouquet smiling, “what a fine opportunity to recite the fable of the frog who wants to make himself as big as an ox.”
Colbert arrived in a dazzling circle of light; Fouquet awaited him impassive and slightly mocking.
Colbert smiled at him too; he had seen his enemy for nearly a quarter of an hour already, and approached tortuously.
Colbert’s smile presaged some hostility.
“Oh! oh!” said Aramis in a low voice to the superintendent, “the knave is going to ask you for a few more millions to pay for his fireworks and his colored glass.”
Colbert saluted first, with an air he strove to render respectful.
Fouquet barely moved his head.
“Well! my lord,” asked Colbert, “what do your eyes say? Have we shown good taste?”
“Perfect taste,” answered Fouquet, without the least mockery to be remarked in these words.
“Oh!” said Colbert maliciously, “you are being indulgent… We are poor, we people of the king, and Fontainebleau is no dwelling to compare with Vaux.”
“That is true,” replied Fouquet phlegmatically, who dominated all the actors in this scene.
“What would you have, my lord!” continued Colbert, “we acted according to our small resources.”
Fouquet made a gesture of assent.
“But,” Colbert pursued, “it would be worthy of your magnificence, my lord, to offer His Majesty a fête in your marvelous gardens… in those gardens that cost you sixty millions.”
“Seventy-two,” said Fouquet.
“All the more reason,” resumed Colbert. “That would indeed be magnificent.”
“But, do you believe, sir,” said Fouquet, “that His Majesty would deign to accept my invitation?”
“Oh! I do not doubt it,” cried Colbert eagerly, “and I will be surety for it.”
“That is very kind of you,” said Fouquet. “May I then count on it?”
“Yes, my lord, yes, certainly.”
“Then I shall consult myself,” said Fouquet.
“Accept, accept,” said Aramis in a low and eager voice.
“You will consult yourself?” repeated Colbert.
“Yes,” answered Fouquet, “to know on what day I may issue my invitation to the king.”
“Oh! this very evening, my lord, this very evening.”
“Accepted,” said the superintendent. “Gentlemen, I would like to give you my invitations; but you know that, wherever the king goes, the king is at home, so it is for you to have yourself invited by His Majesty.”
There was a joyful murmur in the crowd.
Fouquet saluted and departed.
“Wretched proud man!” said Colbert, “you accept, and you know it will cost you ten millions.”
“You have ruined me,” said Fouquet in a low voice to Aramis.
“I have saved you,” replied the latter, while Fouquet mounted the steps of the perron and had the king asked whether he was still visible.
Chapter CXXI — The Clerk of Order
The king, eager to find himself alone with himself to study what was passing in his own heart, had withdrawn to his rooms, where M. de Saint-Aignan had come to rejoin him after his conversation with Madame.
We have reported the conversation.
The favorite, proud of his double importance, and feeling that, for two hours past, he had become the king’s confidant, began, respectful though he was, to treat court affairs a little high-handedly, and, from the point where he had placed himself, or rather where chance had placed him, he saw nothing around him but love and garlands.
The king’s love for Madame, Madame’s for the king, de Guiche’s for Madame, La Vallière’s for the king, Malicorne’s for Montalais, Mlle de Tonnay-Charente’s for him, Saint-Aignan—was not that truly more than enough to turn a courtier’s head?
Now, Saint-Aignan was the model of courtiers past, present, and future.
For the rest, Saint-Aignan showed himself so good a narrator and so subtle an appraiser, that the king listened to him with much interest, especially when he told of the passionate way in which Madame had sought his conversation regarding Mlle de La Vallière’s affairs.
Even had the king no longer felt for Madame Henriette anything of what he had experienced, there was in this eagerness of Madame to have such information given her a satisfaction of vanity that could not escape the king. He therefore felt this satisfaction, but that was all, and his heart was not for a single instant alarmed by what Madame might or might not think of all this adventure.
Only, when Saint-Aignan had finished, the king, while preparing for his night toilet, asked:
“Now, Saint-Aignan, you know what Mlle de La Vallière is, do you not?”
“Not only what she is, but what she will be.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that she is all that a woman can desire to be, that is to say, loved by Your Majesty; I mean that she will be all that Your Majesty wishes her to be.”
“That is not what I ask… I do not wish to know what she is today nor what she will be tomorrow: you have said it, that concerns me; but what she was yesterday. Repeat to me, then, what is said of her.”
“It is said that she is virtuous.”
“Oh!” said the king smiling, “that is a rumor.”
“Rare enough at court, Sire, for it to be believed when spread.”
“You are perhaps right, my dear… And of good birth?”
“Excellent; daughter of the marquis de La Vallière and daughter-in-law of that excellent M. de Saint-Remy.”
“Ah! yes, my aunt’s steward… I recall that, and I now remember: I saw her passing through Blois. She was presented to the queens. I even have to reproach myself, at that time, with not having paid her all the attention she deserved.”
“Oh! Sire, I leave it to Your Majesty to repair lost time.”
“And the rumor would then be, you say, that Mlle de La Vallière has no lover?”
“At any rate, I do not believe Your Majesty would be much alarmed by the rivalry.”
“Wait,” cried the king suddenly with a most serious accent.
“What, Sire?”
“I remember.”
“Ah!”
“If she has no lover, she has a betrothed.”
“A betrothed!”
“How! do you not know that, count?”
“No.”
“You, the man of news.”
“Your Majesty will excuse me. And the king knows this betrothed?”
“Pardieu! his father came to ask me to sign the contract; it is…”
The king was no doubt about to pronounce the name of the vicomte de Bragelonne, when he stopped, frowning.
“It is?” repeated Saint-Aignan.
“I no longer recall,” answered Louis XIV, trying to hide an emotion he ill concealed.
“May I put Your Majesty on the track?” asked the comte de Saint-Aignan.
“No; for I myself no longer know of whom I wished to speak, no, in truth; I vaguely remember that one of the maids of honor was to marry… but the name escapes me.”
“Was it Mlle de Tonnay-Charente he was to marry?” asked Saint-Aignan.
“Perhaps,” said the king.
“Then the future husband was M. de Montespan’s; but Mlle de Tonnay-Charente has not, it seems to me, spoken of it in a way to alarm pretensions.”
“Finally,” said the king, “I know nothing, or almost nothing, of Mlle de La Vallière. Saint-Aignan, I charge you to obtain information concerning her.”
“Yes, Sire, and when shall I have the honor of seeing Your Majesty again to provide it?”
“When you have it.”
“I shall have it quickly, if information travels as fast as my desire to see the king again.”
“Well spoken! By the way, did Madame show anything against this poor girl?”
“Nothing, Sire.”
“Madame was not angry?”
“I know not; only, she kept laughing.”
“Very well; but I hear noise in the antechambers, it seems to me; no doubt I am being brought news of some courier.”
“Indeed, Sire.”
“Inquire, Saint-Aignan.”
The count ran to the door and exchanged a few words with the usher.
“Sire,” he said, returning, “it is M. Fouquet who arrives at this very moment on the king’s order, as he says. He presented himself, but the late hour means he does not even insist on an audience this evening; he contents himself with noting his presence.”
“M. Fouquet! I wrote to him at three o’clock inviting him to be at Fontainebleau the next morning; he arrives at Fontainebleau at two o’clock, that is zeal!” cried the king, radiant at being so well obeyed. “Well! on the contrary, M. Fouquet shall have his audience. I summoned him, I shall receive him. Let him be shown in. You, count, to your researches, and until tomorrow!”
The king put a finger to his lips, and Saint-Aignan slipped away, joy in his heart, giving the usher order to introduce M. Fouquet.
Fouquet then made his entrance into the royal chamber. Louis XIV rose to receive him.
“Good evening, M. Fouquet,” said he with an amiable smile. “I congratulate you on your punctuality; my message must, however, have reached you late?”
“At nine in the evening, Sire.”
“You have worked much these past days, M. Fouquet, for I was assured you had not left your cabinet at Saint-Mandé for three or four days.”
“I did indeed shut myself in for three days, Sire,” replied Fouquet, bowing.
“Do you know, M. Fouquet, that I had many things to say to you?” continued the king in his most gracious air.
“Your Majesty overwhelms me, and, since she is so good to me, does she permit me to remind her of a promise of audience she had made me?”
“Ah! yes, someone of the Church who believes he has to thank me, is it not?”
“Precisely, Sire. The hour is perhaps ill chosen, but the time of him whom I bring is precious, and as Fontainebleau lies on the road to his diocese…”
“Who already?”
“The late bishop of Vannes, whom Your Majesty, at my recommendation, deigned to invest three months ago.”
“That is possible,” said the king, who had signed without reading, “and he is there?”
“Yes, Sire; Vannes is an important diocese: the flock of this shepherd needs his divine word; they are savages whom it matters ever to polish while instructing, and M. d’Herblay has no equal for such missions.”
“M. d’Herblay!” said the king, searching the depths of his memory, as if this name, long heard, was nevertheless not unknown to him.
“Oh!” said Fouquet quickly, “Does Your Majesty not know this obscure name of one of her most faithful and most precious servants?”
“No, I confess… And he wishes to depart?”
“That is to say he received letters today that will perhaps require his departure; so that before setting out again for the lost country called Brittany, he would like to present his respects to Your Majesty.”
“And he waits?”
“He is there, Sire.”
“Have him enter.”
Fouquet made a sign to the usher, who waited behind the tapestry. The door opened, Aramis entered.
The king let him deliver his compliment, and fixed a long gaze on that face which none could forget after having seen it.
“Vannes!” said he: “you are bishop of Vannes, sir?”
“Yes, Sire.”
“Vannes is in Brittany?”
Aramis bowed.
“Near the sea?”
Aramis bowed again.
“A few leagues from Belle-Île?”
“Yes, Sire,” answered Aramis; “six leagues, I believe.”
“Six leagues, that is a step,” said Louis XIV.
“Not for us poor Bretons, Sire,” said Aramis; “six leagues, on the contrary, is a distance, if they are six leagues of land; if they are six leagues of sea, it is an immensity. Now, I have had the honor to tell the king, one counts six leagues of sea from the river to Belle-Île.”
“They say M. Fouquet has there a very fine house?” asked the king.
“Yes, they say so,” answered Aramis, looking calmly at Fouquet.
“How, they say so?” cried the king.
“Yes, Sire.”
“In truth, M. Fouquet, one thing astonishes me, I confess it.”
“Which?”
“How, you have at the head of your parishes a man such as M. d’Herblay, and you have not shown him Belle-Île?”
“Oh! Sire,” replied the bishop, without giving Fouquet time to answer, “we poor Breton prelates practice residence.”
“Monsieur de Vannes,” said the king, “I shall punish M. Fouquet for his carelessness.”
“And how, Sire?”
“I shall transfer you.”
Fouquet bit his lip. Aramis smiled.
“How much does Vannes bring in?” continued the king.
“Six thousand livres, Sire,” said Aramis.
“Ah! my God! so little! But you have property, M. de Vannes?”
“I have nothing, Sire; only, M. Fouquet allows me twelve hundred livres a year for his pew.”
“Come, come, M. d’Herblay, I promise you better than that.”
“Sire…”
“I shall think of you.”
Aramis bowed.
For his part, the king saluted him almost respectfully, as was, moreover, his habit with women and with people of the Church.
Aramis understood that his audience was finished; he took leave with a most simple phrase, with a true phrase of a country pastor, and disappeared.
“There is a remarkable figure,” said the king, following him with his eyes as long as he could see him, and even in some sort when he no longer saw him.
“Sire,” answered Fouquet, “if this bishop had early instruction, no prelate in this realm would deserve like him the highest distinctions.”
“He is not learned?”
“He changed the sword for the chasuble, and that somewhat late. But no matter; if Your Majesty permits me to speak to her again of M. de Vannes in time and place…”
“I beg you to. But, before speaking of him, let us speak of you, M. Fouquet.”
“Of me, Sire?”
“Yes, I have a thousand compliments to pay you.”
“I truly could not express to Your Majesty the joy with which she overwhelms me.”
“Yes, M. Fouquet, I understand. Yes, I have had prejudices against you.”
“Then I was most unhappy, Sire.”
“But they are past. Did you not perceive it?…”
“Indeed I did, Sire; but I awaited with resignation the day of truth. It seems that day has come?”
“Ah! you knew you were in my disfavor?”
“Alas! yes, Sire.”
“And do you know why?”
“Perfectly; the king believed me a squanderer.”
“Oh! no.”
“Or rather a mediocre administrator. In short, Your Majesty believed that, the peoples having no money, the king would have none either.”
“Yes, I believed it; but I am undeceived.”
Fouquet bowed.
“And no rebellions, no complaints?”
“And money,” said Fouquet.
“The fact is you lavished it on me last month.”
“I have more, not only for all needs, but for all the whims of Your Majesty.”
“God be thanked! M. Fouquet,” replied the king seriously, “I shall not put you to the test. Between now and two months, I wish to ask you nothing.”
“I shall profit by it to amass for the king five or six millions that will serve him as first funds in case of war.”
“Five or six millions!”
“For his household only, understand.”
“You believe then in war, M. Fouquet?”
“I believe that, if God gave the eagle a beak and talons, it is for him to use them to show his kingship.”
The king blushed with pleasure.
“We have spent much these past days, M. Fouquet; will you not scold me?”
“Sire, Your Majesty still has twenty years of youth and a billion to spend during those twenty years.”
“A billion! that is much, M. Fouquet,” said the king.
“I shall economize, Sire… Besides, Your Majesty has in M. Colbert and in me two precious men. One will make her spend her money, and that will be me, if nonetheless my service still pleases His Majesty; the other will economize it for her, and that will be M. Colbert.”
“M. Colbert?” resumed the king, astonished.
“Doubtless, Sire; M. Colbert counts perfectly well.”
At this praise of the enemy by the enemy himself, the king felt penetrated with confidence and admiration.
For indeed there was in neither Fouquet’s voice nor his gaze anything that destroyed a letter of the words he had pronounced; he was not making a eulogy in order to have the right to slip in two reproaches.
The king understood, and, surrendering arms before so much generosity and wit:
“You praise M. Colbert?” said he.
“Yes, Sire, I praise him; for, besides that he is a man of merit, I believe him very devoted to the interests of Your Majesty.”
“Is it because he has often crossed your views?” said the king smiling.
“Precisely, Sire.”
“Explain that to me?”
“It is quite simple. I am the man to make money come in, he the man to prevent it going out.”
“Come, come, M. le Superintendent, the devil! you will tell me something that corrects all this good opinion?”
“Administratively, Sire?”
“Yes.”
“Not in the least, Sire.”
“Truly?”
“Upon my honor, I know in France no better clerk than M. Colbert.”
This word clerk did not, in 1661, have the somewhat subaltern meaning given it today; but, passing through the mouth of Fouquet whom the king had just called M. le Superintendent, it took something humble and small that admirably put Fouquet in his place and Colbert in his.
“Well!” said Louis XIV, “it is nevertheless he who, economical as he is, ordered my fêtes at Fontainebleau; and I assure you, M. Fouquet, that he in no way prevented my money from going out.”
Fouquet bowed, but without answering.
“Is that not your opinion?” said the king.
“I find, Sire,” he answered, “that M. Colbert has done things with infinite order, and merits, in that regard, all the praises of Your Majesty.”
This word order made the pendant to the word clerk.
No organization, more than that of the king, had that lively sensibility, that fineness of tact which perceives and seizes the order of sensations before the sensations themselves.
Louis XIV therefore understood that the clerk had had too much order for Fouquet, that is to say that the so splendid fêtes of Fontainebleau might have been even more splendid.
The king felt, in consequence, that someone could reproach something to his diversions; he felt a little vexation at this provincial who, decked in the most sublime garments of his wardrobe, arrives in Paris, where the elegant man regards him too much or too little.
This part of the conversation, so sparing but so fine of Fouquet, gave the king yet more esteem for the man’s character and the minister’s capacity.
Fouquet took leave at two in the morning, and the king went to bed a little uneasy, a little confused by the veiled lesson he had just received; and two good quarters of an hour were employed by him in recalling the embroideries, the tapestries, the menus of the collations, the architectures of the triumphal arches, the dispositions of illuminations and fireworks imagined by order of the clerk Colbert.
It resulted that the king, reviewing all that had passed in a week, found some flaws in his fêtes.
But Fouquet, by his politeness, his good grace and his generosity, had just encroached upon Colbert more deeply than the latter, with his cunning, his malice, his persevering hate, had ever succeeded in encroaching upon Fouquet.
Chapter CXXII — Fontainebleau at Two in the Morning
As we have seen, de Saint-Aignan had left the king’s chamber at the moment the superintendent made his entrance.
De Saint-Aignan was charged with a pressing mission; which is to say that de Saint-Aignan was going to do all he could to make good use of his time.
He was a rare man, that one we have introduced as the king’s friend; one of those precious courtiers whose vigilance and clarity of intent already at that time threw into the shade any favorite past or future, and balanced by his exactitude the servility of Dangeau.
Also Dangeau was not the favorite, he was the king’s complaisant.
De Saint-Aignan therefore oriented himself.
He thought that the first information he had to receive should come to him from de Guiche.
He therefore ran after de Guiche.
De Guiche, whom we saw disappear at the wing of the château and who had all the air of returning home, de Guiche had not returned home.
De Saint-Aignan set about seeking de Guiche.
After having well turned, veered, searched, de Saint-Aignan perceived something like a human form leaning against a tree.
This form had the immobility of a statue and seemed much occupied in looking at a window, though the curtains of that window were hermetically closed.
As this window was Madame’s, de Saint-Aignan thought this form must be de Guiche’s.
He approached softly and saw he was not mistaken.
De Guiche had carried from his talk with Madame such a load of happiness, that all his strength of soul could not suffice to bear it.
For his part, de Saint-Aignan knew that de Guiche had been party to the introduction of La Vallière to Madame; a courtier knows all and remembers all. Only, he had always ignored by what title and on what conditions de Guiche had accorded his protection to La Vallière. But as, in questioning much, it is rare that one learns nothing, de Saint-Aignan counted on learning little or much by questioning de Guiche with all the delicacy and at the same time with all the insistence of which he was capable.
Saint-Aignan’s plan was this:
“Stories of the world, in your language.”