“My dear friend,” said Fouquet, mournfully, “you are like the teacher of philosophy whom La Fontaine was telling us about the other day: he saw a child drowning, and began to read him a lecture divided into three heads.”
Aramis smiled as he said, “Philosophy,- yes, teacher,- yes; a drowning child,- yes; but a child that can be saved,- you shall see. And, first of all, let us talk about business.” Fouquet looked at him with an air of astonishment. “Did you not some time ago speak to me about an idea you had of giving a fete at Vaux?”
“Oh,” said Fouquet, “that was when affairs were flourishing!”
“A fete, I believe, to which the King, without prompting, invited himself?”
“No, no, my dear prelate; a fete to which M. Colbert advised the King to invite himself!”
“Ah! exactly; as it would be a fete of so costly a character that you would be ruined in giving it?”
“Precisely so. In other times, as I said just now, I had a kind of pride in showing my enemies the fruitfulness of my resources; I felt it a point of honor to strike them with amazement, in creating millions under circumstances where they had imagined nothing but bankruptcies possible. But at the present day I am arranging my accounts with the State, with the King, with myself; and I must now become a mean, stingy man. I shall be able to prove to the world that I can act or operate with my deniers as I used to do with my bags of pistoles; and beginning to-morrow, my equipages shall be sold, my houses mortgaged, my expenses contracted.”
“Beginning with to-morrow,” interrupted Aramis, quietly, “you will occupy yourself, without the slightest delay, with your fete at Vaux, which must hereafter be spoken of with the most magnificent productions of your most prosperous days.”
“You are mad, Chevalier d’Herblay.”
“I? You do not think that.”
“What do you mean, then? Do you not know that a fete at Vaux, of the very simplest possible character, would cost four or five millions?”
“I do not speak of a fete of the very simplest possible character, my dear superintendent.”
“But since the fete is to be given to the King,” replied Fouquet, who misunderstood Aramis’s idea, “it cannot be simple.”
“Just so; it ought to be on a scale of the most unbounded magnificence.”
“In that case I shall have to spend ten or twelve millions.”
“You shall spend twenty if you require it,” said Aramis, calmly.
“Where shall I get them?” exclaimed Fouquet.
“That is my affair, Monsieur the Superintendent; and do not be uneasy for a moment about it. The money will be placed at once at your disposal, sooner than you will have arranged the plans of your fete.”
“Chevalier! Chevalier!” said Fouquet, giddy with amazement, “whither are you hurrying me?”
“Across the gulf into which you were about to fall,” replied the Bishop of Vannes. “Take hold of my cloak and throw fear aside!”
“Why did you not tell me that sooner, Aramis? There was a day when with one million you could have saved me.”
“While to-day I can give you twenty,” said the prelate. “Such is the case, however. The reason is very simple. On the day you speak of I had not at my disposal the million which you needed, while now I can easily procure the twenty millions we require.”
“May Heaven hear you, and save me!”
Aramis smiled, with the singular expression habitual with him. “Heaven never fails to hear me,” he said; “perhaps because I pray with a loud voice.”
“I abandon myself to you unreservedly,” Fouquet murmured.
“No, no; I do not understand it in that manner. It is I who am entirely at your service. Therefore you, who have the clearest, the most delicate, and the most ingenious mind,- you shall have entire control over the fete, even to the very smallest details. Only-”
“Only?” said Fouquet, as a man accustomed to appreciate the value of a parenthesis.
“Well, then, leaving the entire invention of the details to you, I shall reserve to myself a general superintendence over the execution.”
“In what way?”