The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas (web based ebook reader .TXT) 📖

word for it, I will not leave you long in doubt. You will see me place my hand on my sword, according to the ordonnance, and you will hear my say at once, in ceremonial voice, ‘Monseigneur, in the name of the king, I arrest you!’”

“You promise me that frankness?” said the superintendent.

“Upon my honor! But we have not come to that, believe me.”

“What makes you think that, M. d’Artagnan? For my part, I think quite the contrary.”

“I have heard speak of nothing of the kind,” replied D’Artagnan.

“Eh! eh!” said Fouquet.

“Indeed, no. You are an agreeable man, in spite of your fever. The king should not, cannot help loving you, at the bottom of his heart.”

Fouquet’s expression implied doubt. “But M. Colbert?” said he; “does M. Colbert love me as much as you say?”

“I am not speaking of M. Colbert,” replied D’Artagnan. “He is an exceptional man. He does not love you; so much is very possible; but, mordioux! the squirrel can guard himself against the adder with very little trouble.”

“Do you know that you are speaking to me quite as a friend?” replied Fouquet; “and that, upon my life! I have never met with a man of your intelligence, and heart?”

“You are pleased to say so,” replied D’Artagnan. “Why did you wait till to-day to pay me such a compliment?”

“Blind that we are!” murmured Fouquet.

“Your voice is getting hoarse,” said D’Artagnan; “drink, monseigneur, drink!” And he offered him a cup of tisane, with the most friendly cordiality; Fouquet took it, and thanked him by a gentle smile. “Such things only happen to me,” said the musketeer. “I have passed ten years under your very beard, while you were rolling about tons of gold. You were clearing an annual pension of four millions; you never observed me; and you find out there is such a person in the world, just at the moment you—”

“Just at the moment I am about to fall,” interrupted Fouquet. “That is true, my dear Monsieur d’Artagnan.”

“I did not say so.”

“But you thought so; and that is the same thing. Well! if I fall, take my word as truth, I shall not pass a single day without saying to myself, as I strike my brow, ‘Fool! fool!—stupid mortal! You had a Monsieur d’Artagnan under your eye and hand, and you did not employ him, you did not enrich him!’”

“You overwhelm me,” said the captain. “I esteem you greatly.”

“There exists another man, then, who does not think as M. Colbert thinks,” said the surintendant.

“How this M. Colbert looms up in your imagination! He is worse than fever!”

“Oh! I have good cause,” said Fouquet. “Judge for yourself.” And he related the details of the course of the lighters, and the hypocritical persecution of Colbert. “Is not this a clear sign of my ruin?”

D’Artagnan became very serious. “That is true,” he said. “Yes; it has an unsavory odor, as M. de Treville used to say.” And he fixed on M. Fouquet his intelligent and significant look.

“Am I not clearly designated in that, captain? Is not the king bringing me to Nantes to get me away from Paris, where I have so many creatures, and to possess himself of Belle-Isle?”

“Where M. d’Herblay is,” added D’Artagnan. Fouquet raised his head. “As for me, monseigneur,” continued D’Artagnan, “I can assure you the king has said nothing to me against you.”

“Indeed!”

“The king commanded me to set out for Nantes, it is true; and to say nothing about it to M. de Gesvres.”

“My friend.”

“To M. de Gesvres, yes, monseigneur,” continued the musketeer, whose eye s did not cease to speak a language different from the language of his lips. “The king, moreover, commanded me to take a brigade of musketeers, which is apparently superfluous, as the country is quite quiet.”

“A brigade!” said Fouquet, raising himself upon his elbow.

“Ninety-six horsemen, yes, monseigneur. The same number as were employed in arresting MM. de Chalais, de Cinq-Mars, and Montmorency.”

Fouquet pricked up his ears at these words, pronounced without apparent value. “And what else?” said he.

“Oh! nothing but insignificant orders; such as guarding the castle, guarding every lodging, allowing none of M. de Gesvres’s guards to occupy a single post.”

“And as to myself,” cried Fouquet, “what orders had you?”

“As to you, monseigneur?—not the smallest word.”

“Monsieur d’Artagnan, my safety, my honor, perhaps my life are at stake. You would not deceive me?”

“I?—to what end? Are you threatened? Only there really is an order with respect to carriages and boats—”

“An order?”

“Yes; but it cannot concern you—a simple measure of police.”

“What is it, captain?—what is it?”

“To forbid all horses or boats to leave Nantes, without a pass, signed by the king.”

“Great God! but—”

D’Artagnan began to laugh. “All that is not to be put into execution before the arrival of the king at Nantes. So that you see plainly, monseigneur, the order in nowise concerns you.”

Fouquet became thoughtful, and D’Artagnan feigned not to observe his preoccupation. “It is evident, by my thus confiding to you the orders which have been given to me, that I am friendly towards you, and that I am trying to prove to you that none of them are directed against you.”

“Without doubt!—without doubt!” said Fouquet, still absent.

“Let us recapitulate,” said the captain, his glance beaming with earnestness. “A special guard about the castle, in which your lodging is to be, is it not?”

“Do you know the castle?”

“Ah! monseigneur, a regular prison! The absence of M. de Gesvres, who has the honor of being one of your friends. The closing of the gates of the city, and of the river without a pass; but, only when the king shall have arrived. Please to observe, Monsieur Fouquet, that if, instead of speaking to man like you, who are one of the first in the kingdom, I were speaking to a troubled, uneasy conscience—I should compromise myself forever. What a fine opportunity for any one who wished to be free! No police, no guards, no orders; the water free, the roads free, Monsieur d’Artagnan obliged to lend his horses, if required. All this ought to reassure you, Monsieur Fouquet, for the king would not have left me thus independent, if he had any sinister designs. In truth, Monsieur