The blood of Louis XIV, who had so profoundly dissimulated his feelings, boiled in his veins; he was perfectly ready to get Fouquet’s throat cut, as his predecessor had caused the assassination of the Marechal d’Ancre. He concealed, beneath one of those royal smiles which are the lightning flashes to the thunderbolts of the State, the terrible resolution he had formed. Fouquet took the King’s hand, and kissed it. Louis shuddered throughout his whole frame, but allowed Fouquet to touch his hand with his lips.
Five minutes afterwards, d’Artagnan, to whom the royal order had been communicated, entered Louis XIV’s apartment. Aramis and Philippe were in theirs, still eagerly attentive and still listening. The King did not even give the captain of the Musketeers time to approach his arm-chair, but ran forward to meet him. “Take care,” he exclaimed, “that no one enters here!”
“Very good, Sire,” replied the captain, whose glance had for a long time past analyzed the ravages on the King’s countenance. He gave the necessary order at the door; but returning to the King he said, “Is there some new trouble, your Majesty?”
“How many men have you here?” said the King, without making other reply to the question addressed to him.
“What for, Sire?”
“How many men have you, I say?” repeated the King, stamping upon the ground with his foot.
“I have the Musketeers.”
“Well; and what others?”
“Twenty Guards and thirteen Swiss.”
“How many men will be required to-”
“To do what, Sire?” replied the musketeer, opening his large, calm eyes.
“To arrest M. Fouquet.”
D’Artagnan fell back a step. “To arrest M. Fouquet!” he burst forth.
“Are you going to tell me that it is impossible?” exclaimed the King, with cold and vindictive passion.
“I never said that anything is impossible,” replied d’Artagnan, wounded to the quick.
“Very well; do it, then.”
D’Artagnan turned on his heel, and made his way towards the door,- it was but a short distance, and he cleared it in half a dozen paces. When he reached it he suddenly paused, and said, “Your Majesty will forgive me; but in order to effect this arrest I should like written directions.”
“For what purpose? and since when has the King’s word been insufficient for you?”
“Because the word of a King when it springs from a feeling of anger may possibly change when the feeling changes.”
“No more phrases, Monsieur; you have another thought besides that?”
“Oh, I always have thoughts; and thoughts which, unfortunately, others have not!” d’Artagnan replied impertinently.
The King, in the tempest of his wrath, hesitated, and drew back in the face of that man, just as a horse crouches on his haunches under the strong hand of a rider. “What is your thought?” he exclaimed.
“This, Sire,” replied d’Artagnan: you cause a man to be arrested when you are still under his roof; and passion is alone the cause of that. When your anger shall have passed away you will regret what you have done; and then I wish to be in a position to show you your signature. If that mends nothing, it will at least show us that the King is wrong to lose his temper.”
“Wrong to lose his temper!” shouted the King, with frenzy. “Did not my father, my grandfather too, before me, lose their temper, body of Christ!”
“The King your father and the King your grandfather never lost their temper except in the privacy of their own palace.”
“The King is master wherever he may be.”
“That is a flattering phrase which cannot proceed from any one but M. Colbert; but it happens not to be the truth. The King is at home in every man’s house when he has driven its owner out of it.”
The King bit his lips.
“Can it be possible?” said d’Artagnan. “Here is a man who is ruining himself in order to please you, and you wish to have him arrested! Mordioux! Sire, if my name were Fouquet, and any one treated me in that manner, I would swallow at a single gulp ten pieces of fireworks, and I would set fire to them and blow myself and everybody else up to the sky. But it is all the same; it is your wish, and it shall be done.”