Part 5

La Vallière, however, could not help feeling a certain unease. The visit of the surintendant was no ordinary event in the life of a woman of the Court. Fouquet, so celebrated for his generosity, his gallantry, and his delicacy with women, had received more invitations than he had asked for audiences.

In many houses, the presence of the surintendant had meant fortune. In many a heart, it had meant love.

Fouquet entered La Vallière's apartments respectfully, presenting himself with that grace which was the distinguishing mark of the eminent men of that century, and which today is no longer understood, even in the portraits of the time, where the painter has tried to make them live.

La Vallière replied to Fouquet's ceremonious bow with the curtsy of a boarding-school girl, and indicated a seat to him.

But Fouquet, bowing:

— I shall not sit down, mademoiselle, he said, until you have forgiven me.

— I? asked La Vallière.

— Yes, you.

— And forgiven what, for heaven's sake?

Fouquet fixed his most piercing gaze upon the young girl, and believed he saw upon her face only the most naive astonishment.

— I see, mademoiselle, he said, that you are as generous as you are witty, and I read in your eyes the pardon that I was soliciting. But the pardon of the lips is not enough for me, I warn you; I must have besides the pardon of the heart and of the mind.

— Upon my word, monsieur, said La Vallière, I swear to you that I do not understand you.

— That is yet another delicacy which charms me, replied Fouquet, and I see that you do not wish me to have to blush before you.

— Blush! blush before me! But come, tell me, what would you blush for?

— Am I mistaken, said Fouquet, and do I have the happiness that my conduct toward you has not given offense?

La Vallière shrugged her shoulders.

— Decidedly, monsieur, she said, you speak in riddles, and I am too ignorant, it would seem, to understand you.

— Very well, said Fouquet, I shall not insist. Only, tell me, I beg of you, that I may count upon your full and entire pardon.

— Monsieur, said La Vallière with a sort of impatience, I can only give you one answer, and I hope it will satisfy you. If I knew what wrong you have done me, I would forgive you for it. All the more, you understand well, not knowing that wrong...

Fouquet pinched his lips as Aramis would have done.

— Then, he said, I may hope that, notwithstanding what has happened, we shall remain on good terms, and that you will do me the grace of believing in my respectful friendship.

La Vallière thought she was beginning to understand.

"Oh!" she said to herself, "I should not have believed M. Fouquet so eager to seek out the sources of so new a favor."

Then aloud:

— Your friendship, monsieur? she said, you offer me your friendship? But, truly, it is for me all honor, and you overwhelm me.

— I know, mademoiselle, replied Fouquet, that the friendship of the master may seem more brilliant and more desirable than that of the servant; but I guarantee to you that the latter will be just as devoted, just as faithful, and absolutely disinterested.

La Vallière inclined her head: there was, in fact, much conviction and real devotion in the voice of the surintendant.

She therefore held out her hand to him.

— I believe you, she said.

Fouquet eagerly took the hand the young girl held out to him.

— Then, he added, you will see no difficulty, will you not, in returning me that unfortunate letter?

— What letter? asked La Vallière.

Fouquet questioned her, as he had already done, with the full power of his gaze.

Same naivety of expression, same candor of face.

— Come, mademoiselle, he said, after that denial, I am forced to admit that your system is the most delicate in the world, and I should not myself be an honest man if I feared anything from a woman as generous as you.

— Truly, Monsieur Fouquet, replied La Vallière, it is with profound regret that I am forced to repeat to you that I absolutely understand nothing in your words.

— But, finally, upon your honor, you have then received no letter from me, mademoiselle?

— Upon my honor, none, replied La Vallière firmly.

— That is well, that is enough for me, mademoiselle; permit me to renew to you the assurance of all my esteem and all my respect.

Then, bowing, he went out to rejoin Aramis, who was waiting for him at his house, leaving La Vallière wondering whether the surintendant had gone mad.

— Well! asked Aramis, who was awaiting Fouquet with impatience, are you pleased with the favorite?

— Enchanted, replied Fouquet, she is a woman full of wit and heart.

— She was not angry?

— Far from it; she did not even seem to understand.

— Understand what?

— Understand that I had written to her.

— And yet, she must have understood you well enough to return the letter to you, for I presume she returned it to you.

— Not in the least.

— At least, did you assure yourself that she had burned it?

— My dear Monsieur d'Herblay, it is already an hour that I have been playing at broken remarks, and I am beginning to have enough of that game, amusing though it be. Understand me well; the little one pretended not to understand what I was saying to her; she denied having received any letter; therefore, having positively denied receiving it, she could neither return it to me, nor burn it.

— Oh! oh! said Aramis with uneasiness, what are you telling me there?

— I tell you that she swore to me by all her gods never to have received any letter.

— Oh! that is too much! And you did not insist?

— I insisted, on the contrary, to the point of impertinence.

— And she always denied?

— Always.

— She did not contradict herself for a single instant?

— Not a single instant.

— But then, my dear, you left our letter in her hands?

— Well, the devil! it had to be.

— Oh! that is a great fault.

— What the devil would you have done in my place, you?

— Certainly, one could not force her, but this is troubling; such a letter cannot remain against us.

— Oh! this young girl is generous.

— Had she been truly so, she would have returned your letter to you.

— I tell you she is generous; I have seen her eyes, I know about these things.

— Then you believe her in good faith?

— Oh! with all my heart.

— Well! I, I believe we are mistaken.

— How so?

— I believe that indeed, as she told you, she did not receive the letter.

— What! did not receive the letter?

— No.

— Would you suppose!...

— I suppose that, for a motive we are ignorant of, your man did not deliver the letter.

Fouquet struck a bell.

A valet appeared.

— Have Tobie brought in, he said.

An instant later appeared a man with a restless eye, a fine mouth, short arms, and a bent back.

Aramis fixed his piercing eye upon him.

— Will you permit me to question him myself? asked Aramis.

— Do so, said Fouquet.

Aramis made a movement to address the lackey, but stopped.

— No, he said, he would see that we attach too much importance to his answer; question him yourself; I am going to pretend to write.

Aramis in fact seated himself at a table, his back turned to the lackey, whose every gesture and every glance he examined in a parallel mirror.

— Come here, Tobie, said Fouquet.

The lackey approached with a fairly firm step.

— How did you carry out my commission? Fouquet asked him.

— Why, I did it as usual, my lord, replied the man.

— In short, speak.

— I entered Mlle de La Vallière's rooms, who was at mass, and I placed the note upon her toilet table. Is that not what you told me?

— Yes; and that is all?

— Absolutely all, my lord.

— Was no one there?

— No one.

— Were you hidden, as I had told you to be, then?

— Yes.

— And she came back in?

— Ten minutes later.

— And no one could have taken the letter?

— No one, for no one came in.

— From outside, but from inside?

— From where I was hidden, I could see to the back of the room.

— Listen, said Fouquet, looking fixedly at the lackey, if this letter went to the wrong destination, confess it to me; for if an error has been committed, you shall pay for it with your head.

Tobie started, but recovered at once.

— My lord, he said, I placed the letter where I said, and I ask only half an hour to prove to you that the letter is in the hands of Mlle de La Vallière, or to bring you the letter itself.

Aramis observed the lackey curiously.

Fouquet was easy in his trust; for twenty years this man had served him well.

— Go, he said, that is well; but bring me the proof you speak of.

The lackey went out.

— Well! what do you think of it? Fouquet asked Aramis.

— I think that we must, by some means, assure ourselves of the truth. I think the letter either has or has not reached La Vallière; that, in the first case, La Vallière must return it to you or give you the satisfaction of burning it before you; that, in the second, the letter must be recovered, though it cost us a million. Come, is that not your view?

— Yes; but yet, my dear bishop, I believe you exaggerate the situation.

— Blind, blind that you are! murmured Aramis.

— La Vallière, whom we take for a politician of the first rank, is simply a coquette who hopes that I shall court her because I already have, and who, now that she has confirmation of the king's love, hopes to keep me on a leash with the letter. That is natural.

Aramis shook his head.

— That is not your opinion? said Fouquet.

— She is not a coquette.

— Let me tell you...

— Oh! I know about coquettish women, said Aramis.

— My friend! my friend!

— You mean it is a long time since I did my studies. Oh! women do not change.

— Yes, but men change, and you are today more suspicious than formerly.

Then, laughing:

— Come, he said, if La Vallière will love me for a third and the king for two thirds, do you find the condition acceptable?

Aramis rose with impatience.

— La Vallière, he said, has never loved and will never love any but the king.

— But finally, said Fouquet, what would you have done?

— Ask me rather what I should have done.

— Well! what should you have done?

— First, I should not have let that man leave.

— Tobie?

— Yes, Tobie; he is a traitor!

— Oh!

— I am sure of it! I should not have let him leave until he had confessed the truth to me.

— It is still time.

— How so?

— Let us recall him, and question him in your turn.

— So be it!

— But I assure you the thing is quite useless. I have had him for twenty years, and never has he caused me the least confusion, and yet, added Fouquet laughing, it would have been easy.

— Recall him nonetheless. This morning, it seemed to me I saw that face in deep conference with one of M. Colbert's men.

— Where was that?

— Opposite the stables.

— Bah! all my people are at daggers drawn with that boor's.

— I saw him, I tell you! and his face, which should have been unknown to me when he came in just now, struck me unpleasantly.

— Why did you say nothing while he was there?

— Because it is only this minute that I see clearly in my memories.

— Oh! oh! here is something that frightens me, said Fouquet.

And he struck the bell.

— Provided it is not too late, said Aramis.

Fouquet struck a second time.

The ordinary valet de chambre appeared.

— Tobie! said Fouquet, have Tobie brought in.

The valet de chambre closed the door again.

— You leave me a free hand, do you not?

— Entirely.

— I may employ all means to learn the truth?

— All.

— Even intimidation?

— I make you my proxy.

They waited ten minutes, but in vain.

Fouquet, impatient, struck the bell again.

— Tobie! he cried.

— But, my lord, said the valet, he is being looked for.

— He cannot be far, I gave him no message.

— I will go see, my lord.

Aramis, during this time, walked impatiently but silently in the cabinet.

They waited ten minutes more.

Fouquet rang in a way to awaken a whole necropolis.

The valet de chambre re-entered, trembling enough to give belief to bad news.

— My lord is mistaken, he said before Fouquet had even questioned him, my lord must have given some commission to Tobie, for he went to the stables to take the best runner, and, my lord, he saddled it himself.

— Well?

— He is gone.

— Gone?... cried Fouquet. Let someone run, let him be caught!

— There! there! said Aramis taking him by the hand, let us calm ourselves; now, the mischief is done.

— The mischief is done?

— Doubtless, I was sure of it. Now, let us not give the alarm; let us calculate the result of the blow and parry it, if we can.

— After all, said Fouquet, the harm is not great.

— You think so? said Aramis.

— Doubtless. A man is quite permitted to write a love note to a woman.

— To a man, yes; to a subject, no; especially when that woman is the one the king loves.

— Eh! my friend, the king did not love La Vallière a week ago; he did not even love her yesterday, and the letter is from yesterday; I could not divine the king's love when the king's love did not yet exist.

— Be it so, replied Aramis; but the letter is unfortunately not dated. That is what troubles me above all. Ah! if it were dated only yesterday, I should not have the shadow of a worry for you.

Fouquet shrugged his shoulders.

— Am I then under guardianship, he said, and is the king then king of my brain and of my flesh?

— You are right, replied Aramis; let us not give things more importance than is fitting; then besides... well! if we are threatened, we have means of defense.

— Oh! threatened! said Fouquet, you do not put that ant bite among the threats that can compromise my fortune and my life, do you?

— Eh! think on it, Monsieur Fouquet, the bite of an ant can kill a giant, if the ant is venomous.

— But that all-powerfulness you spoke of, come, is it already vanished?

— I am all-powerful, be it so; but I am not immortal.

— Come, finding Tobie would be the most pressing, it seems to me. Is that not your opinion?

— Oh! as for that, you will not find him again, said Aramis, and, if he was precious to you, mourn him as lost.

— Finally, he is somewhere in the world, said Fouquet.

— You are right; leave it to me, replied Aramis.

Chapter CXXXVIII — The Four Chances of Madame

Queen Anne had sent word asking the young queen to come pay her a visit.

For some time, ailing and falling from the height of her beauty, from the height of her youth, with that rapidity of decline which marks the decay of women who have struggled much, Anne of Austria saw joined to her physical ill the pain of counting no longer as anything but a living memory amid the young beauties, the young minds, and the young powers of her Court.

The opinions of her physician, those of her mirror, afflicted her far less than those inexorable warnings of courtier society which, like the rats of a ship, abandon the hold where the water will penetrate thanks to the damages of age.

Anne of Austria was not satisfied with the hours her eldest son gave her.

The king, a good son, more with affectation than with affection, first came to spend an hour with his mother in the morning and an hour in the evening; but, since he had charged himself with the affairs of the State, the morning and evening visits had been reduced by half an hour; then, little by little, the morning visit had been suppressed.

One saw each other at mass; the evening visit itself was replaced by a meeting, either at the king's in assembly, or at Madame's, where the queen came rather complaisantly out of regard for her two sons.

There resulted that immense ascendancy over the Court which Madame had conquered, and which made of her house the true royal gathering.

Anne of Austria felt it.

Seeing herself ailing and condemned by sickness to frequent retirements, she was desolated to foresee that most of her days, of her evenings, would flow by solitary, useless, despairing.

She recalled with terror the isolation where Richelieu had once left her, fatal and insupportable evenings, during which yet she had for consolation youth, beauty, which are always accompanied by hope.

Then she formed the project of transporting the Court to her own rooms and of attracting Madame, with her brilliant escort, into the dark and already sad dwelling where the widow of a king of France, the mother of a king of France, was reduced to consoling for her anticipated widowhood the ever-tearful wife of a king of France.

Anne reflected.

She had intrigued much in her life. In the fine days, when her young head gave birth to always happy projects, she had near her, to stimulate her ambition and her love, a friend more ardent, more ambitious than herself, a friend who had loved her, a rare thing at Court, and whom petty considerations had estranged from her.

But for so many years, except Mme de Motteville, except La Molena, that Spanish nurse, confidante by virtue of compatriot and woman, who could flatter themselves to have given the queen good advice?

Who too, among all those young heads, could recall to her the past, by which alone she lived?

Anne of Austria remembered Mme de Chevreuse, first exiled rather by her own will than the king's, then dead in exile the wife of an obscure gentleman.

She asked herself what Mme de Chevreuse would have counseled her formerly in such a case in their common embarrassments of intrigue, and, after serious meditation, it seemed to her that this cunning woman, full of experience and sagacity, answered her in her ironic voice:

— All those little young men are poor and greedy. They need gold and rents to feed their pleasures; take them to me through interest.

Anne of Austria adopted this plan.

Her purse was well filled; she disposed of a considerable sum amassed by Mazarin for her and placed in safe keeping.

She had the finest jewels in France, and above all pearls of such size that they made the king sigh each time he saw them, because the pearls of his crown were but millet seeds beside those.

Anne of Austria no longer had beauty or charms at her disposal. She made herself rich and proposed as bait for those who would come to her, either good gold crowns to win at play, or good endowments cleverly made on days of good humor, or windfalls of rents which she wrung from the king by soliciting, which she had decided to do to maintain her credit.

And first she tried this means upon Madame, whose possession was the most precious of all to her.

Madame, despite the intrepid confidence of her spirit and her youth, threw herself headlong into the trap that was opened before her. Enriched little by little by gifts, by cessions, she took a taste for these anticipated inheritances.

Anne of Austria used the same means upon Monsieur and upon the king himself.

She instituted lotteries at her house.

The day we have arrived at, it was a question of a midnight collation at the queen mother's, and this princess was putting up in lottery two very beautiful diamond bracelets of exquisite workmanship.

The medallions were antique cameos of the greatest value; as revenue, the diamonds did not represent a very considerable sum, but the originality, the rarity of workmanship were such, that one desired at Court not only to possess, but to see these bracelets upon the arms of the queen, and that, on the days she wore them, it was a favor to be admitted to admire them while kissing her hands.

The courtiers had even on this subject adopted variants of gallantry to establish this aphorism, that the bracelets would have been priceless had they not the misfortune to be in contact with arms such as the queen's.

This compliment had the honor of being translated into all the languages of Europe; more than a thousand Latin and French distichs circulated upon this matter.

The day Anne of Austria decided for the lottery, it was a decisive moment: the king had not come to his mother's for two days. Madame was sulking after the great scene of the dryads and the naiads.

The king no longer sulked; but an all-powerful distraction lifted him above the storms and pleasures of the Court.

Anne of Austria operated her diversion by announcing the famous lottery at her rooms for the following evening.

She saw, to this effect, the young queen, to whom, as we have said, she had asked a visit that morning.

— My daughter, she said to her, I announce to you good news. The king has told me the tenderest things of you. The king is young and easy to divert; but, as long as you keep near me, he will not dare stray from you, to whom besides he is attached by a very lively tenderness. This evening, there is a lottery at my rooms: will you come?

— I have been told, said the young queen with a sort of timid reproach, that Your Majesty is putting up in lottery her beautiful bracelets, which are of such rarity, that we ought not to have let them out of the crown's wardrobe, were it only because they belonged to you.

— My daughter, said then Anne of Austria, who foresaw all the young queen's thought and wished to console her for not having received this gift, I had to attract Madame to me forever.

— Madame? said the young queen, blushing.

— Doubtless; do you not prefer to have a rival near you to watch and dominate her, than to know the king at her house, always disposed to court as to be courted? This lottery is the lure I use for that: do you blame me?

— Oh! no! said Marie-Thérèse, clapping her hands with that childishness of Spanish joy.

— And you no longer regret, my dear, that I did not give you these bracelets, as was at first my intention?

— Oh! no, oh! no, my good mother!...

— Well! my dear daughter, make yourself very beautiful, and let our midnight collation be brilliant: the gayer you are there, the more charming you will appear, and you will eclipse all women by your splendor as by your rank.

Marie-Thérèse left enthused.

An hour later, Anne of Austria received Madame at her rooms, and, covering her with caresses:

— Good news! she said, the king is charmed by my lottery.

— I, said Madame, am not so charmed by it; to see beautiful bracelets like those upon the arms of a woman other than you, my queen, or me, that is what I cannot get used to.

— There! there! said Anne of Austria, hiding beneath a smile a violent pain she had just felt, do not rebel, young woman... and do not go straightaway taking things at the worst.

— Ah! madame, fate is blind... and you have, I am told, two hundred tickets?

— Just so many. But you are not unaware that there will be but one winner?

— Doubtless. Upon whom will it fall? Can you say? said Madame in despair.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”