“Well, well,” said Fouquet, “I understand; you have relied upon me to repair the wrong which has been done to this unhappy brother of Louis XIV. You have thought well; I will help you. I thank you, d’Herblay, I thank you.”
“Oh, no, it is not that at all; you have not allowed me to finish,” said Aramis, unmoved.
“I will not say another word, then.”
“M. Fouquet, I was observing that the minister of the reigning sovereign was suddenly regarded with the greatest aversion, and menaced with the ruin of his fortune, with loss of liberty, with loss of life even, by intrigue and personal hatred, to which the King gave too readily an attentive ear. But Heaven permits- still, however, out of consideration for the unhappy Prince who had been sacrificed- that M. Fouquet should in his turn have a devoted friend who knew this state secret, and felt that he possessed strength and courage enough to divulge it, after having had the strength to carry it locked up in his own heart for twenty years.”
“Do not go on any farther,” said Fouquet, full of generous feelings. “I understand you, and can guess everything now. You went to see the King when the intelligence of my arrest reached you. You implored him; he refused to listen to you. Then you threatened him with the revelation of that secret; and Louis XIV, alarmed, granted to the fear of your indiscretion what he refused to your generous intercession. I understand, I understand: you have the King in your power; I understand.”
“You understand nothing as yet,” replied Aramis, “and again you have interrupted me. And then, too, allow me to observe that you pay no attention to logical reasoning, and seem to forget what you ought most to remember.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know upon what I laid the greatest stress at the beginning of our conversation?”
“Yes, his Majesty’s hate, invincible hate, for me; yes, but what feeling of hate could resist the threat of such a revelation?”
“Such a revelation, do you say? that is the very point where your logic fails you. What! do you suppose that if I had made such a revelation to the King, I should have been alive now?”
“It is not ten minutes ago since you were with the King?”
“That may be. He might not have had the time to get me killed outright, but he would have had the time to get me gagged and thrown into a dungeon. Come, come! show a little consistency in your reasoning, mordieu!”
And by the mere use of this word of the Musketeers, an oversight of one who never seemed to forget anything, Fouquet could not but understand to what a pitch of exaltation the calm, impenetrable Bishop of Vannes had wrought himself. He shuddered at it.
“And then,” replied the latter, after having mastered his feelings, “should I be the man I really am, should I be the true friend you consider me, if I were to expose you- you whom the King hates already bitterly enough- to a feeling still more than ever to be dreaded in that young man? To have robbed him is nothing; to have addressed the woman he loves is not much; but to hold in your keeping both his crown and his honor,- why, he would rather pluck out your heart with his own hands!”
“You have not allowed him to penetrate your secret, then?”
“I would sooner, far sooner, have swallowed at one draught all the poisons that Mithridates drank in twenty years in trying to avoid death.”
“What have you done, then?”
“Ah, now we are coming to the point, Monseigneur! I think I shall not fail to excite a little interest in you. You are listening, I hope?”
“How can you ask me if I am listening? Go on.”
Aramis walked softly all round the room, satisfied himself that they were alone and that all was silent, and then returned, and placed himself close to the arm-chair in which Fouquet awaited with the deepest anxiety the revelations he had to make.
“I forgot to tell you,” resumed Aramis, addressing himself to Fouquet, who listened to him with the most absorbed attention,- “I forgot to mention a most remarkable circumstance respecting these twins; namely, that God had formed them so like each other that he alone, if he should summon them to his tribunal, could distinguish the one from the other. Their own mother could not do it.”