“I wish to see the governor,” replied the King, still controlling his passion.
“He will send you off to one of the dungeons, I tell you; so take care!”
“I insist upon it!- do you hear?”
“Ah! ah! your eyes are becoming wild again. Very good! I shall take away your knife.”
The jailer did as he had said, closed the door and departed, leaving the King more astounded, more wretched, and more alone than ever. In vain he began again to pound the door; in vain he threw the plates and dishes out of the window; not a sound was heard in answer. Two hours later he could not be recognized as a King, a gentleman, a man, a human being; he might rather be called a madman, tearing the door with his nails, trying to tear up the flooring of his cell, and uttering such wild and fearful cries that the old Bastille seemed to tremble to its very foundations for having revolted against its master. As for the governor, the jailer did not even think of disturbing him; the turnkeys and the sentinels had made their report, but what was the good of it? Were not these madmen common enough in the fortress, and were not the walls still stronger than they?
M. de Baisemeaux, thoroughly impressed with what Aramis had told him, and in perfect conformity with the King’s order, hoped only that one thing might happen; namely, that the madman Marchiali might be mad enough to hang himself to the canopy of his bed or to one of the bars of the window. In fact, the prisoner was anything but a profitable investment for M. Baisemeaux, and became more annoying than agreeable to him. These complications of Seldon and Marchiali, these complications of deliverance and reincarceration, these complications of personal resemblance, would have found a very proper denouement. Baisemeaux even thought he had remarked that d’Herblay himself would not be altogether dissatisfied with it.
“And then, really,” said Baisemeaux to his next in command, “an ordinary prisoner is already unhappy enough in being a prisoner; he suffers quite enough indeed to induce one to hope, in charity, that his death may not be far distant. With still greater reason, then, when the prisoner has gone mad, and may bite and make a disturbance in the Bastille,- why, in that case it is not simply an act of mere charity to wish him dead; it would be almost a commendable action quietly to put him out of his misery.” And the good-natured governor thereupon sat down to his late breakfast.
Chapter XLVII: The Shadow of Fouquet
D’ARTAGNAN, still confused and oppressed by the conversation he had just had with the King, asked himself if he were really in possession of his senses; if the scene had occurred at Vaux; if he, d’Artagnan, were really the captain of the Musketeers and Fouquet the owner of the chateau in which Louis XIV was at that moment partaking of his hospitality. These reflections were not those of a drunken man, although everything was in prodigal profusion at Vaux, and the superintendent’s wines had met with a distinguished reception at the fete.
The Gascon, however, was a man of calm self-possession; and when he touched his steel blade he was able to assume, figuratively, the coolness of that steel for his great occasions. “Well,” he said, as he quitted the royal apartment, “I seem now to be mixed up historically with the destinies of the King and of the minister; it will be written that M. d’Artagnan, a younger son of a Gascon family, placed his hand on the shoulder of M. Nicholas Fouquet, the superintendent of the finances of France. My descendants, if I have any, will flatter themselves with the distinction which this arrest will confer, just as the members of the De Luynes family have done with regard to the estates of the poor Marechal d’Ancre. But now the thing to be done is to execute the King’s directions in a proper manner. Any man would know how to say to M. Fouquet, ‘Your sword, monsieur!’ But it is not every one who would be able to take care of M. Fouquet without others knowing anything about it. How am I to manage, then, so that Monsieur the Superintendent may pass from the height of favor to the direst disgrace; so that he may exchange Vaux for a dungeon; so that after having been steeped to his lips, as it were, in all the perfumes and incense of Ahasuerus, he may be transferred to the gallows of Haman,- in other words, of Enguerrand de Marigny?” And at this reflection d’Artagnan’s brow became clouded with perplexity. The musketeer had scruples. To deliver thus to death (for not a doubt existed that Louis hated Fouquet mortally) the man who had just shown himself so delightful and charming a host in every way, was a real case of conscience. “It seems to me,” said d’Artagnan to himself, “that if I am not a wretch, I shall let M. Fouquet know the purpose of the King in regard to him. Yet if I betray my master’s secret, I shall be a false-hearted knave and a traitor,- a crime provided for and punishable by military laws, as proved by the fact that twenty times in the wars I have seen miserable fellows strung up for doing in little degree what my scruples counsel me to do on a larger scale. No, I think that a man of intelligence ought to get out of this difficulty with more skill than that. And now shall we admit that I have intelligence? It is doubtful; having drawn on it for forty years, I shall be lucky if there be a pistole’s worth left.”