“Yes,” replied Fouquet, “you may have been acting on my behalf; but I do not accept your service. At the same time, I do not wish your ruin. You will leave this house.”
Aramis stifled an exclamation which almost escaped his broken heart.
“I am hospitable towards all who are dwellers beneath my roof,” continued Fouquet, with an air of inexpressible majesty; “you will not be more fatally lost than he whose ruin you have consummated.”
“You will be so,” said Aramis, in a hoarse, prophetic, voice- “you will be so, believe me.”
“I accept the augury, M. d’Herblay; but nothing shall stop me. You will leave Vaux; you must leave France. I give you four hours to place yourself out of the King’s reach.”
“Four hours?” said the Bishop of Vannes, scornfully and incredulously.
“Upon the word of Fouquet, no one shall follow you before the expiration of that time. You will therefore have four hours’ advance of those whom the King may wish to despatch after you.”
“Four hours!” repeated Aramis, in a thick, smothered voice.
“It is more than you will need to get on board a vessel, and flee to Belle-Isle, which I give you as a place of refuge.”
“Ah!” murmured Aramis.
“Belle-Isle is as much mine for you as Vaux is mine for the King. Go, d’Herblay, go! as long as I live, not a hair of your head shall be injured.”
“Thank you,” said Aramis, with a cold irony of manner.
“Go at once, then, and give me your hand, before we both hasten away,- you to save your life, I to save my honor.”
Aramis withdrew from his breast the hand he had concealed there; it was stained with his blood. He had dug his nails into his flesh, as if in punishment for having nursed so many projects, more vain, insensate, and fleeting than the life of man. Fouquet was horror-stricken, and then his heart smote him with pity. He opened his arms to Aramis.
“I had no weapons,” murmured Aramis, as wild and terrible as the shade of Dido. And then, without touching Fouquet’s hand, he turned his head aside, and stepped back a pace or two. His last word was an imprecation, his last gesture a curse, which his blood-stained hand seemed to invoke, as it sprinkled on Fouquet’s face a few drops of his blood; and both of them darted out of the room by the secret staircase which led down to the inner courtyard. Fouquet ordered his best horses, while Aramis paused at the foot of the staircase which led to Porthos’s apartment. He reflected for some time, while Fouquet’s carriage left the stone-paved courtyard at full gallop.
“Shall I go alone,” said Aramis to himself, “or warn the Prince? Oh, fury! Warn the Prince, and then- do what? Take him with me? Carry this accusing witness about with me everywhere? War, too, would follow,- civil war, implacable in its nature! And without any resource- alas, it is impossible! What will he do without me? Without me he will be utterly destroyed! Yet who knows? let destiny be fulfilled! Condemned he was, let him remain so, then! God! Demon! Gloomy and scornful Power, whom men call the Genius of man, thou art only a breath, more uncertain, more useless, than the wind in the mountains! Chance thou term’st thyself, but thou art nothing; thou inflamest everything with thy breath, crumblest mountains at thy approach, and suddenly art thyself destroyed at the presence of the cross of dead wood, behind which stands another Power invisible like thyself,- whom thou deniest, perhaps, but whose avenging hand is on thee, and hurls thee in the dust dishonored and unnamed! Lost! I am lost! What can be done? Flee to Bell-Isle? Yes, and leave Porthos behind me, to talk and relate the whole affair to every one,- Porthos, who will suffer, perhaps! I will not let poor Porthos suffer. He is one of the members of my own frame; his grief is mine. Porthos shall leave with me, and shall follow my destiny. It must be so.”
And Aramis, apprehensive of meeting any one to whom his hurried movements might appear suspicious, ascended the staircase without being perceived. Porthos, but just returned from Paris, slept already the sleep of the just; his huge body forgot its fatigue as his mind forgot its thoughts. Aramis entered, light as a shadow, and placed his nervous grasp on the giant’s shoulder. “Come, Porthos,” he cried, “come.”