“No.”
“Well, that tells me of an arrest that will have to be made this very day.”
“Well,” said the superintendent, more astonished than annoyed by this frankness, “if there is nothing disagreeable predicted to you by your sword, I am to conclude that it is not disagreeable for you to arrest me.”
“You? arrest you?”
“Of course. The warning-”
“Does not concern you, since you have been arrested ever since yesterday. It is not you I shall have to arrest, be assured of that. That is the reason why I am delighted, and also the reason why I said that my day will be a happy one.”
And with these words, pronounced with the most affectionate graciousness of manner, the captain took leave of Fouquet in order to wait upon the King. He was on the point of leaving the room when Fouquet said to him, “One last mark of your kindness.”
“What is it, Monseigneur?”
“M. d’Herblay,- let me see M. d’Herblay.”
“I am going to try and get him to come to you.”
D’Artagnan did not think himself so good a prophet. It was written that the day would pass away and realize all the predictions that had been made in the morning. He had accordingly knocked, as we have seen, at the King’s door. The door opened. The captain thought that it was the King who had just opened it himself; and this supposition was not altogether inadmissible, considering the state of agitation in which he had left Louis XIV on the previous evening. But instead of his royal master, whom he was on the point of saluting with the greatest respect, he perceived the long, calm features of Aramis. So extreme was his surprise that he could hardly refrain from uttering a loud exclamation. “Aramis!” he said.
“Good-morning, dear d’Artagnan,” replied the prelate, coldly.
“You here?” stammered out the musketeer.
“His Majesty desires you to report that he is still sleeping, after having been greatly fatigued during the whole night.”
“Ah!” said d’Artagnan, who could not understand how the Bishop of Vannes, who had been so indifferent a favorite the previous evening, had become in half-a-dozen hours the largest mushroom of fortune which had ever sprung up in a sovereign’s bedroom. In fact, to transmit the orders of the King even to the mere threshold of that monarch’s room, to serve as an intermediary of Louis XIV so as to be able to give a single order in his name at a couple of paces from him, he must be greater than Richelieu had ever been to Louis XIII. D’Artagnan’s expressive eye, his half-opened lips, his curling mustache, said as much, indeed, in the plainest language to the chief favorite, who remained calm and unmoved.
“Moreover,” continued the bishop, “you will be good enough, Monsieur the Captain of the Musketeers, to allow those only to pass into the King’s room this morning who have special permission. His Majesty does not wish to be disturbed just yet.”
“But,” objected d’Artagnan, on the point of refusing to obey this order, and particularly of giving unrestrained passage to the suspicions which the King’s silence had aroused,- “but, Monsieur the Bishop, his Majesty gave me a rendezvous for this morning.”
“Later, later,” said the King’s voice from the bottom of the alcove,- a voice which made a cold shudder pass through the musketeer’s veins. He bowed, amazed, confused, and stupefied by the smile with which Aramis seemed to overwhelm him as soon as those words had been pronounced.
“And then,” continued the bishop, “as an answer to what you were coming to ask the King, my dear d’Artagnan, here is an order of his Majesty, which you will be good enough to attend to forthwith, for it concerns M. Fouquet.”
D’Artagnan took the order which was held out to him.
“To be set at liberty!” he murmured. “Ah!” and he uttered a second “ah!” still more full of intelligence than the former,- for this order explained Aramis’s presence with the King. Aramis, in order to have obtained Fouquet’s pardon, must have made considerable progress in the royal flavor; and this favor explained, in its tenor, the hardly conceivable assurance with which M. d’Herblay issued the orders in the King’s name. For d’Artagnan it was quite sufficient to have understood something in order to understand everything. He bowed, and withdrew a couple of steps, as if about to leave.