Part 4

— Ah! said one of the two, raising his head, here comes the storm. Shall we return to the carriages, my dear d’Herblay?

Aramis lifted his eyes to the sky and studied the weather.

— Oh! he said, there is no hurry yet.

Then, taking up the conversation where he had no doubt left it:

— You were saying, then, that the letter we wrote yesterday evening must by this time have reached its destination?

— I say it certainly has.

— Through whom did you have it delivered?

— By my grey horse, as I had the honour of telling you.

— Did he bring back a reply?

— I have not seen him again; no doubt the little one was attending to her duties near Madame, or dressing at her own rooms, and kept him waiting. The hour of departure came and we left. I cannot, consequently, know what passed there.

— You saw the king before leaving?

— Yes.

— How did you find him?

— Perfect or infamous, according as he had been truthful or hypocritical.

— And the festival?

— It will take place in a month.

— Did he invite himself to it?

— With an insistence in which I recognised Colbert.

— That is well.

— Has the night robbed you of your illusions?

— About what?

— About the assistance you can lend me in this circumstance.

— No; I spent the night writing, and all orders are given.

— The festival will cost several millions; do not deceive yourself about that.

— I shall make six… You make two or three on your side, just in case.

— You are a miraculous man, my dear d’Herblay.

Aramis smiled.

— But, asked Fouquet with a lingering uneasiness, since you thus move millions about, why, a few days ago, did you not give the fifty thousand francs to Baisemeaux out of your own pocket?

— Because, a few days ago, I was as poor as Job.

— And today?

— Today, I am richer than the king.

— Very good, said Fouquet; I know men. I know you are incapable of breaking your word to me; I do not wish to wring your secret from you: let us speak of it no more.

At that moment a dull rumbling was heard, which suddenly burst into a violent clap of thunder.

— Oh! oh! said Fouquet, I told you so.

— Come, said Aramis, let us rejoin the carriages.

— We shall not have time, said Fouquet; here is the rain.

Indeed, as if the sky had opened, a downpour of large drops suddenly made the dome of the forest resound.

— Oh! said Aramis, we have time to regain the coaches before the foliage is flooded.

— It would be better, said Fouquet, to withdraw into some grotto.

— Yes, but where is there a grotto? asked Aramis.

— I, said Fouquet with a smile, know of one ten paces from here.

Then orienting himself:

— Yes, he said, that is it.

— How fortunate you are to have such a good memory! said Aramis, smiling in his turn; but do you not fear that, not seeing us reappear, your coachman may think we have taken a return road and follow the carriages of the Court?

— Oh! said Fouquet, there is no danger; when I post my coachman and my carriage at any given spot, nothing but an express order from the king could make them budge, and even then; besides, it seems to me we are not the only ones who have advanced so far. I hear footsteps and the sound of voices.

And, as he said these words, Fouquet turned round, opening with his cane a mass of foliage that hid the road from him.

Aramis’s gaze plunged at the same moment as his through the opening.

— A woman! said Aramis.

— A man! said Fouquet.

— La Vallière!

— The king!

— Oh! oh! said Aramis, does the king also know your cavern, then? That would not surprise me; he seems to me to be on quite well-regulated terms with the nymphs of Fontainebleau.

— No matter, said Fouquet, let us gain it nonetheless; if he does not know it, we shall see what becomes of him; if he knows it, since it has two openings, while he enters by one we shall leave by the other.

— Is it far? asked Aramis; here is the rain beginning to seep through.

— We are there.

Fouquet parted a few branches, and one could make out a rock excavation entirely hidden by heather, ivy, and a thick carpet of fallen acorns.

Fouquet showed the way.

Aramis followed him.

At the moment of entering the grotto, Aramis turned round.

— Oh! oh! he said, there they are entering the wood, there they are making their way this way.

— Well! let us yield them the place, said Fouquet smiling and pulling Aramis by his cloak; but I do not think the king knows my grotto.

— Indeed, said Aramis, they are searching, but for a thicker tree, that is all.

Aramis was not mistaken; the king was looking up at the sky and not around him.

He held La Vallière’s arm under his own; he held her hand upon his.

La Vallière was beginning to slip on the damp grass.

Louis looked even more attentively around him, and, perceiving an enormous oak with thick foliage, he drew La Vallière under the shelter of that oak.

The poor child looked about her; she seemed at once to fear and to desire being followed.

The king leaned her against the trunk of the tree, whose vast circumference, protected by the thickness of the foliage, was as dry as if, at that very moment, the rain were not pouring down in torrents. He himself stood before her bareheaded.

After a moment, a few drops filtered through the branches of the tree, and fell upon the king’s brow, who paid them no heed.

— Oh! Sire! murmured La Vallière, pushing the king’s hat.

But the king inclined and obstinately refused to cover himself.

— This is the time, if ever, to offer your place, said Fouquet in Aramis’s ear.

— This is the time, if ever, to listen and not lose a word of what they are about to say, answered Aramis in Fouquet’s ear.

Indeed, both were silent, and the king’s voice could reach them.

— Oh! my God! mademoiselle, said the king, I see, or rather I guess, your uneasiness; believe that I sincerely regret having isolated you from the rest of the company, and that, to lead you to a place where you will suffer from the rain. You are already wet, you are cold perhaps?

— No, Sire.

— You are trembling, however?

— Sire, it is the fear that my absence may be ill interpreted at the moment when everyone is certainly gathered together.

— I would gladly propose that you return to the carriages, mademoiselle; but, in truth, look and listen and tell me if it is possible to attempt the least walk at this moment?

Indeed, the thunder was rumbling and the rain was streaming down in torrents.

— Besides, continued the king, there is no interpretation possible to your disadvantage. Are you not with the King of France, that is to say, with the first gentleman of the realm?

— Certainly, Sire, replied La Vallière, and it is a very great honour for me; so it is not for myself that I fear interpretations.

— For whom, then?

— For you, Sire.

— For me, mademoiselle? said the king, smiling. I do not understand you.

— Has Your Majesty then already forgotten what passed last evening at His Royal Highness’s?

— Oh! let us forget that, I beg you, or rather permit me to remember only so as to thank you once more for your letter, and…

— Sire, interrupted La Vallière, there is the water falling, and Your Majesty remains bareheaded.

— I pray you, let us think only of you, mademoiselle.

— Oh! I, said La Vallière smiling, I am a country girl used to running through the meadows of the Loire, and the gardens of Blois, whatever the weather. And, as for my clothes, she added, looking at her simple muslin dress, Your Majesty sees they have very little to risk.

— Indeed, mademoiselle, I have already remarked more than once that you owe almost everything to yourself and nothing to dress. You are not coquettish, and that is for me a great quality.

— Sire, do not make me better than I am, and say only: You cannot be coquettish.

— Why so?

— But, said La Vallière smiling, because I am not rich.

— Then you admit that you love fine things, cried the king eagerly.

— Sire, I find beautiful only the things I can attain. All that is too high for me…

— Is indifferent to you?

— Is strange to me as being forbidden.

— And I, mademoiselle, said the king, I do not find that you are at my Court on the footing you ought to be. Certainly my uncle greatly neglected the fortune of your house.

— Oh! no, Sire. His Royal Highness Monsieur the Duke of Orléans has always been perfectly good to M. de Saint-Remy, my stepfather. The services were humble, and one may say we were paid according to our works. Not everyone has the happiness to find occasions of serving his king with distinction. Surely, I do not doubt that, had occasions offered, my family would have had as great a heart as desire, but we have not had that happiness.

— Well! mademoiselle, it is for kings to correct chance, and I gladly charge myself with repairing, as quickly as may be with regard to you, the wrongs of fortune.

— No, Sire, cried La Vallière eagerly, you will leave, if you please, things in the state they are.

— What! mademoiselle, you refuse what I owe, what I wish to do for you?

— All that I desired has been done, Sire, when I was granted the honour of belonging to Madame’s household.

— But, if you refuse for yourself, accept at least for your family.

— Sire, your so generous intention dazzles and frightens me, for, in doing for my house what your goodness prompts you to do, Your Majesty will create us enviers, and for herself enemies. Leave me, Sire, in my mediocrity; leave to all the sentiments I may feel the joyful delicacy of disinterestedness.

— Oh! that is a most admirable language, said the king.

— It is true, murmured Aramis in Fouquet’s ear, and he must not be used to it.

— But, answered Fouquet, if she makes such a reply to my note?

— Come! said Aramis, let us not prejudge and await the end.

— And then, dear Monsieur d’Herblay, added the superintendent, little inclined to believe in all the sentiments La Vallière had just expressed, it is often a clever calculation to seem disinterested with kings.

— That is exactly what I was thinking this minute, said Aramis. Let us listen.

The king drew near to La Vallière, and, as the water filtered more and more through the oak’s foliage, he held his hat suspended above the young girl’s head.

The young girl raised her beautiful blue eyes to that royal hat which sheltered her and shook her head, sighing.

— Oh! my God, said the king, what sad thought can reach your heart when I make a rampart of mine for it?

— Sire, I will tell you. I had already approached this question, so difficult for a young girl of my age to discuss, but Your Majesty imposed silence on me. Sire, Your Majesty is not his own; Sire, Your Majesty is married; any sentiment that would draw Your Majesty from the queen, by leading Your Majesty to occupy yourself with me, would be for the queen a source of deep sorrow.

The king tried to interrupt the young girl, but she continued with a supplicating gesture:

— The queen loves Your Majesty with a tenderness that is understandable; the queen follows Your Majesty with her eyes at every step that separates him from her. Having had the happiness to meet such a husband, she asks of Heaven with tears to keep possession of him, and she is jealous of the least movement of your heart.

The king wished to speak again, but this time too La Vallière dared to stop him.

— Would it not be a guilty action, she said to him, if, seeing so lively and so noble a tenderness, Your Majesty gave the queen a subject for jealousy? oh! pardon me that word, Sire. Oh! my God! I know well it is impossible, or rather it should be impossible, that the greatest queen in the world should be jealous of a poor girl like me. But she is a woman, that queen, and, like the heart of a simple woman, hers may open to suspicions that the wicked would envenom. In the name of Heaven! Sire, do not occupy yourself with me, I do not deserve it.

— Oh! mademoiselle, cried the king, you do not then reflect that in speaking as you do you change my esteem into admiration.

— Sire, you take my words for what they are not; you see me better than I am; you make me greater than God has made me. Pardon for me, Sire! for, if I did not know the king to be the most generous man in his realm, I should believe the king wishes to mock me.

— Oh! certainly! you fear no such thing, I am quite sure of it, cried Louis.

— Sire, I should be forced to believe it if the king continued to hold such language to me.

— I am then a most unhappy prince, said the king with a sadness that had nothing affected about it, the most unhappy prince in Christendom, since I have no power to give credence to my words before the person I love most in the world and who breaks my heart in refusing to believe in my love.

— Oh! Sire, said La Vallière, gently putting aside the king, who had drawn closer and closer to her, there, I think, is the storm calming and the rain ceasing.

But, at the very moment when the poor child, to flee her poor heart, too much in accord no doubt with the king’s, uttered these words, the storm charged itself with giving her the lie; a bluish flash illuminated the forest with a fantastic reflection, and a clap of thunder like a discharge of artillery burst over the heads of the two young people, as if the height of the oak that sheltered them had provoked the thunder.

The young girl could not restrain a cry of fright.

The king drew her with one hand to his heart and stretched the other above her head as if to shield her from the lightning.

There was a moment of silence in which this group, charming as all that is young and loved, remained motionless, while Fouquet and Aramis contemplated it, no less motionless than La Vallière and the king.

— Oh! Sire! Sire! murmured La Vallière, do you hear?

And she let her head fall upon his shoulder.

— Yes, said the king, you see well enough the storm does not pass.

— Sire, it is a warning.

The king smiled.

— Sire, it is the voice of God that threatens.

— Well! said the king, I do indeed accept this clap of thunder for a warning and even for a threat, if within five minutes it renews itself with like force and equal violence; but, if nothing of the sort, permit me to think that the storm is the storm and nothing else.

At the same time the king raised his head as if to question the sky.

But, as if the sky had been in league with Louis, during the five minutes of silence that followed the explosion which had terrified the two lovers, no new rumbling was heard, and, when the thunder sounded again, it was in visibly withdrawing, and as if, during those five minutes, the storm, put to flight, had travelled ten leagues, lashed by the wing of the wind.

— Well! Louise, said the king very low, will you still threaten me with celestial anger; and since you would make of the thunder a presentiment, will you still doubt that it is at least a presentiment of misfortune?

The young girl raised her head; during that time the water had pierced the vault of leaves and was streaming down the king’s face.

— Oh! Sire, Sire! she said with an accent of irresistible fear, which moved the king to the utmost. And it is for me, she murmured, that the king remains thus uncovered and exposed to the rain; but what am I, then?

— You are, as you see, said the king, the divinity that puts the storm to flight, the goddess that brings back fair weather.

Indeed, a ray of sunlight, filtering through the forest, made to fall like so many diamonds the drops of water that rolled on the leaves or fell vertically in the intervals of the foliage.

— Sire, said La Vallière, almost vanquished, but making a supreme effort, Sire, one last time, think of the sorrows Your Majesty is about to have to endure because of me. At this moment, my God! they seek you, they call you. The queen must be uneasy, and Madame, oh! Madame!… cried the young girl with a sentiment that resembled fright.

That name produced a certain effect upon the king; he started and released La Vallière, whom he had till then held embraced.

Then he advanced toward the path to look, and came back almost worried to La Vallière.

— Madame, did you say? said the king.

— Yes, Madame; Madame who is jealous also, said La Vallière with a profound accent.

And her eyes, so timid, so chastely fleeting, dared for an instant to question the king’s eyes.

— But, resumed Louis, making an effort upon himself, Madame, it seems to me, has no cause to be jealous of me, Madame has no right…

— Alas! murmured La Vallière.

— Oh! mademoiselle, said the king almost with an accent of reproach, would you be of those who think that the sister has the right to be jealous of the brother?

— Sire, it belongs not to me to pierce the secrets of Your Majesty.

— Oh! you believe it like the others, cried the king.

— I believe that Madame is jealous, yes, Sire, answered La Vallière firmly.

— My God! said the king with uneasiness, would you then perceive it in her ways toward you? Has Madame any ill treatment toward you that you could attribute to that jealousy?

— Not at all, Sire; I am so little a thing, myself!

— Oh! it is that, if it were so… cried Louis with a singular force.

— Sire, interrupted the young girl, it no longer rains; they are coming, they are coming, I think.

And, forgetting all etiquette, she had seized the king’s arm.

— Well! mademoiselle, replied the king, let them come. Who would dare take it ill that I had kept company with Mlle de La Vallière?

— For pity! Sire; oh! they will find it strange that you are thus wet, that you have sacrificed yourself for me.

— I have done but my duty as a gentleman, said Louis, and woe to him who, failing in his own, should criticise the conduct of his king!

Indeed, at that moment there appeared in the alley some eager and curious heads which seemed to search, and which, having perceived the king and La Vallière, appeared to have found what they sought.

They were the envoys of the queen and of Madame, who put their hats to their hands in sign that they had seen His Majesty.

But Louis did not quit, whatever La Vallière’s confusion, his respectful and tender attitude.

Then, when all the courtiers were gathered in the alley, when everyone had been able to see the mark of deference he had given the young girl in remaining standing and bareheaded before her during the storm, he offered her his arm, led her back toward the group that waited, answered with a nod to the salute each paid him, and, his hat still in his hand, conducted her to her carriage.

And, as the rain continued to fall yet, last farewell of the retreating storm, the other ladies, whom respect had prevented from entering their coaches before the king, received without cloak or mantle this rain which the king, with his hat, shielded, as far as in him lay, the humblest among them from.

The queen and Madame must, like the others, have seen this exaggerated courtesy of the king; Madame lost her composure to the point of nudging the queen with her elbow, saying to her:

— Look, but do look!

The queen closed her eyes as if she had felt a vertigo. She raised her hand to her face and remounted into her carriage.

Madame mounted after her.

The king took to horse again, without attaching himself preferentially to any door; he returned to Fontainebleau, the reins on his horse’s neck, dreamy and wholly absorbed.

When the crowd had withdrawn, when they had heard the noise of horses and carriages dying away, when they were sure at last that no one could see them, Aramis and Fouquet came out of their grotto. Then, in silence, both gained the alley.

Aramis plunged his gaze, not only into all the extent that unfolded before him and behind him, but also into the thickness of the woods.

— Monsieur Fouquet, said he, when he had assured himself that all was solitary, we must at any price recover your letter to La Vallière.

— That will be easy, said Fouquet, if the grey horse has not delivered it.

— It must, in any case, be possible; do you understand?

— Yes; the king loves this girl, does he not?

— Greatly, and, what is worst, is that, on her side, this girl loves the king passionately.

— Which means we change tactics, does it not?

— Without any doubt; you have no time to lose. You must see La Vallière, and, without further thinking to become her lover, which is impossible, declare yourself her dearest friend and her humblest servant.

— So shall I do, replied Fouquet, and that without repugnance; this child seems to me full of heart.

— Or of address, said Aramis; but then all the more reason.

Then he added after a moment of silence:

— Either I am mistaken, or this little girl will be the great passion of the king. Let us remount to the carriage, and at full gallop to the château.

Chapter CXXXVII — Tobias

Two hours after the superintendent’s carriage had departed on Aramis’s order, bearing them both toward Fontainebleau with the speed of the clouds that ran across the sky under the last breath of the tempest, La Vallière was in her rooms, in a simple muslin dressing-gown, and finishing her collation at a little marble table.

Suddenly her door opened, and a valet de chambre warned her that M. Fouquet asked permission to pay his respects to her.

She had it repeated twice; the poor child knew M. Fouquet only by name, and could not guess what she might have in common with a superintendent of finances.

However, as he might come from the king, and, according to the conversation we have reported, the thing was quite possible, she cast a glance at her mirror, lengthened yet further the long curls of her hair, and gave order that he be introduced.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”