The looks of the two men met, and they both saw that they had understood each other without exchanging a syllable.
“Well!” asked Fouquet, the first to speak, “and M. d’Herblay?”
“Upon my word, Monseigneur,” replied d’Artagnan, “M. d’Herblay must be desperately fond of walks by night, and composing verses by moonlight in the park of Vaux with some of your poets in all probability; for he is not in his room.”
“What! not in his room?” cried Fouquet, whose last hope had thus escaped him; for without knowing in what way the Bishop of Vannes could assist him, he well knew that he could not expect assistance from any one else.
“Or, indeed,” continued d’Artagnan, “if he is in his own room, he has very good reasons for not answering.”
“But surely you did not call him in such a manner that he could have heard you?”
“You can hardly suppose, Monseigneur, that having already exceeded my orders, which forbade my leaving you a single moment,- you can hardly suppose, I say, that I should have been mad enough to rouse the whole house and allow myself to be seen in the corridor of the Bishop of Vannes, in order that M. Colbert might state with positive certainty that I gave you time to burn your papers.”
“My papers?”
“Of course; at least, that is what I should have done in your place. When any one opens a door for me, I always avail myself of it.”
“Yes, yes, and I thank you; I have availed myself of it.”
“And you have done right, morbleu! Every man has his own peculiar secrets, with which others have nothing to do. But let us return to Aramis, Monseigneur.”
“Well, then, I tell you, you could not have called loudly enough, or he would have heard you.”
“However softly any one may call Aramis, Monseigneur, he always hears when he has an interest in hearing. I repeat what I said before,- Aramis was not in his own room, or he had certain reasons for not recognizing my voice, of which I am ignorant, and of which you even may be ignorant yourself, notwithstanding your liegeman is his Greatness the Lord Bishop of Vannes.”
Fouquet drew a deep sigh, rose from his seat, made three or four turns in his room, and finished by seating himself, with an expression of extreme dejection, upon his magnificent bed with velvet hangings and trimmed with the costliest lace.
D’Artagnan looked at Fouquet with feelings of the deepest and sincerest pity.
“I have seen a good many men arrested in my life,” said the musketeer, sadly,- “I have seen both M. de Cinq-Mars and M. de Chalais arrested, though I was very young then; I have seen M. de Conde arrested with the Princes; I have seen M. de Retz arrested; I have seen M. Broussel arrested. Stay a moment, Monseigneur! It is disagreeable to have to say it; but the very one of all those whom you most resemble at this moment was that poor fellow Broussel. You were very near doing as he did,- putting your dinner napkin in your portfolio, and wiping your mouth with your papers. Mordioux! Monseigneur Fouquet, a man like you ought not to be dejected in this manner. Suppose your friends saw you.”
“M. d’Artagnan,” returned the superintendent, with a smile full of gentleness, “you do not understand me. It is precisely because my friends do not see me, that I am such as you see me now. I do not live isolated from others; I am nothing when left to myself. Understand that throughout my whole life I have passed every moment of my time in making friends whom I hoped to render my stay and support. In times of prosperity all these happy voices- and rendered so by me- formed in my honor a concert of praises and kindly actions. In the least disfavor, these humbler voices accompanied in harmonious accents the murmur of my own heart. Isolation I have never yet known. Poverty- a phantom I have. sometimes beheld, clad in rags, awaiting me at the end of my journey through life- poverty is the spectre with which many of my own friends have trifled for years past, which they poetize and caress, and to which they have attracted me. Poverty!- I accept it, acknowledge it, receive it as a disinherited sister; for poverty is not solitude, nor exile, nor imprisonment. Is it likely I shall ever be poor, with such friends as Pellisson, as La Fontaine, as Moliere; with such a mistress as- Oh! solitude, to me, a man of society; to me, a man inclined to pleasure; to me, who exist only because others exist- Oh, if you knew how utterly lonely and desolate I feel at this moment, and how you, who separate me from all I love, seem to be the image of solitude, of annihilation, and of death!”