Dumas, Alexandre – Ten Years Later
Whilst D’Artagnan was returning to Planchet’s house, his
head aching and bewildered with all that had happened to
him, there was passing a scene of quite a different
character, and which, nevertheless is not foreign to the
conversation our musketeer had just had with the king; only
this scene took place out of Paris, in a house possessed by
the superintendent Fouquet in the village of Saint-Mande.
The minister had just arrived at this country-house,
followed by his principal clerk, who carried an enormous
portfolio full of papers to be examined, and others waiting
for signature. As it might be about five o’clock in the
afternoon, the masters had dined: supper was being prepared
for twenty subaltern guests. The superintendent did not
stop: on alighting from his carriage, he, at the same bound,
sprang through the doorway, traversed the apartments and
gained his cabinet, where he declared he would shut himself
up to work, commanding that he should not be disturbed for
anything but an order from the king. As soon as this order
was given, Fouquet shut himself up, and two footmen were
placed as sentinels at his door. Then Fouquet pushed a bolt
which displaced a panel that walled up the entrance, and
prevented everything that passed in this apartment from
being either seen or heard. But, against all probability, it
was only for the sake of shutting himself up that Fouquet
shut himself up thus, for he went straight to a bureau,
seated himself at it, opened the portfolio, and began to
make a choice amongst the enormous mass of papers it
contained. It was not more than ten minutes after he had
entered, and taken all the precautions we have described,
when the repeated noise of several slight equal knocks
struck his ear, and appeared to fix his utmost attention.
Fouquet raised his head, turned his ear, and listened.
The strokes continued. Then the worker arose with a slight
movement of impatience and walked straight up to a glass
behind which the blows were struck by a hand, or by some
invisible mechanism. It was a large glass let into a panel.
Three other glasses, exactly similar to it, completed the
symmetry of the apartment. Nothing distinguished that one
from the others. Without doubt, these reiterated knocks were
a signal; for, at the moment Fouquet approached the glass
listening, the same noise was renewed, and in the same
measure. “Oh! oh!” murmured the intendent, with surprise,
“who is yonder? I did not expect anybody to-day.” And,
without doubt, to respond to that signal, he pulled out a
gilded nail near the glass, and shook it thrice. Then
returning to his place, and seating himself again, “Ma foi!
let them wait,” said he. And plunging again into the ocean
of papers unrolled before him, he appeared to think of
nothing now but work. In fact with incredible rapidity and
marvelous lucidity, Fouquet deciphered the largest papers
and most complicated writings, correcting them, annotating
them with a pen moved as if by a fever, and the work melting
under his hands, signatures, figures, references, became
multiplied as if ten clerks — that is to say, a hundred
fingers and ten brains had performed the duties, instead of
the five fingers and single brain of this man. From time to
time, only, Fouquet, absorbed by his work, raised his head
to cast a furtive glance upon a clock placed before him. The
reason of this was, Fouquet set himself a task, and when
this task was once set, in one hour’s work he, by himself,
did what another would not have accomplished in a day;
always certain, consequently, provided he was not disturbed,
of arriving at the close in the time his devouring activity