“I am delighted to hear it; tell me about them.”
“Well, then, one day Signor Mazarin, Heaven rest his soul! made a profit of thirteen millions upon a concession of lands in the Valtelline; he cancelled them in the registry of receipts, sent them to me, and then made me advance them to him for war expenses.”
“Very good; then there is no doubt of their proper disbursement?”
“No; the Cardinal placed them under my name, and gave me a receipt.”
“You have the receipt?”
“Of course,” said Fouquet, as he quietly rose from his chair, and went to his large ebony bureau, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and gold.
“What I most admire in you,” said Aramis, with an air of great satisfaction, “is your memory, in the first place; then, your self-possession; and finally, the perfect order which prevails with you,- you, a poet par excellence.”
“Yes,” said Fouquet, “I am orderly out of a spirit of idleness, to save myself the trouble of looking after things; and so I know that Mazarin’s receipt is in the third drawer under the letter M. I open the drawer, and place my hand upon the very paper I need. In the night, without a light, I could find it”; and with a confident hand he felt the bundle of papers which were piled up in the open drawer. “Nay, more than that,” he continued, “I remember the paper as if I saw it. It is thick, somewhat crumpled, with gilt edges. Mazarin had made a blot upon the figure of the date. Ah!” he said, “the paper knows we are talking about it, and that we want it very much, and so it hides itself out of the way.” As the superintendent looked into the drawer, Aramis rose from his seat. “This is very singular,” said Fouquet.
“Your memory is treacherous, my dear Monseigneur; look in another drawer.”
Fouquet took out the bundle of papers, and turned them over once more; he then became very pale.
“Don’t confine your search to that drawer,” said Aramis; “look elsewhere.”
“Quite useless. I have never made a mistake. No one but myself arranges any papers of mine of this nature; no one but myself ever opens this drawer, of which, besides, no one but myself is aware of the secret.”
“What do you conclude, then?” said Aramis, agitated.
“That Mazarin’s receipt has been stolen from me. Madame de Chevreuse was right, Chevalier; I have appropriated the public funds; I have robbed the State coffers of thirteen millions of money; I am a thief, M. d’Herblay.”
“Nay, nay; do not get irritated, do not get excited!”
“And why not, Chevalier? Surely there is every reason for it. If the legal proceedings are well arranged, and a judgment is given in accordance with them, your friend the superintendent can follow to Montfaucon his colleague Enguerrand de Marigny and his predecessor Samblancay.”
“Oh,” said Aramis, smiling, “not so fast!”
“And why not? Why not so fast? What do you suppose Madame de Chevreuse will have done with those letters,- for you refused them, I suppose?”
“Yes; at once. I suppose that she went and sold them to M. Colbert.”
“Well?”
“I said I supposed so. I might have said I was sure of it, for I had her followed; and when she left me, she returned to her own house, went out by a back door, and proceeded straight to the intendant’s house in the Rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs.”
“Legal proceedings will be instituted, then scandal and dishonor will follow; and all will fall upon me like a thunderbolt, blindly, harshly, pitilessly.”
Aramis approached Fouquet, who sat trembling in his chair, close to the open drawers; he placed his hand on his shoulder, and in an affectionate tone of voice said, “Do not forget that the position of M. Fouquet can in no way be compared to that of Samblancay or of Marigny.”
“And why not, in Heaven’s name?”
“Because the proceedings against those ministers were determined, completed, and the sentence carried out; while in your case the same thing cannot take place.”
“Another blow! Why not? A peculator is, under any circumstances, a criminal.”
“Those criminals who know how to find a safe asylum are never in danger.”