your affairs going on?”
“I am going this evening to get my friends out of the
prisons of the Palais.”
“How will you do that?”
“By buying and bribing the governor.”
“He is a friend of mine; can I assist you, without injuring
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you?”
“Oh! marquise, it would be a signal service; but how can you
be employed without your being compromised? Now, never shall
my life, my power, or even my liberty, be purchased at the
expense of a single tear from your eyes, or of one frown of
pain upon your brow.”
“Monseigneur, no more such words, they bewilder me; I have
been culpable in trying to serve you, without calculating
the extent of what I was doing. I love you in reality, as a
tender friend; and as a friend, I am grateful for your
delicate attentions — but, alas! — alas! you will never
find a mistress in me.”
“Marquise!” cried Fouquet, in a tone of despair; “why not?”
“Because you are too much beloved,” said the young woman, in
a low voice; “because you are too much beloved by too many
people — because the splendor of glory and fortune wound my
eyes, whilst the darkness of sorrow attracts them; because,
in short, I, who have repulsed you in your proud
magnificence; I who scarcely looked at you in your splendor,
I came, like a mad woman, to throw myself, as it were, into
your arms, when I saw a misfortune hovering over your head.
You understand me now, monseigneur? Become happy again, that
I may remain chaste in heart and in thought; your misfortune
entails my ruin.”
“Oh! madame,” said Fouquet, with an emotion he had never
before felt; “were I to fall to the lowest degree of human
misery, and hear from your mouth that word which you now
refuse me, that day, madame, you will be mistaken in your
noble egotism; that day you will fancy you are consoling the
most unfortunate of men, and you will have said, I love you,
to the most illustrious, the most delighted, the most
triumphant of the happy beings of this world.”
He was still at her feet, kissing her hand, when Pellisson
entered precipitately, crying, in very ill-humor,
“Monseigneur! madame! for Heaven’s sake! excuse me.
Monseigneur, you have been here half an hour. Oh! do not
both look at me so reproachfully. Madame, pray who is that
lady who left your house soon after monseigneur came in?”
“Madame Vanel,” said Fouquet.
“Ha!” cried Pellisson, “I was sure of that.”
“Well! what then?”
“Why, she got into her carriage, looking deadly pale.”
“What consequence is that to me?”
“Yes, but what she said to her coachman is of consequence to
you.”
“Kind heaven!” cried the marquise, “what was that?”
“To M. Colbert’s!” said Pellisson, in a hoarse voice.
“Bon Dieu! — begone, begone, monseigneur!” replied the
marquise, pushing Fouquet out of the salon, whilst Pellisson
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dragged him by the hand.
“Am I, then, indeed,” said the superintendent, “become a
child, to be frightened by a shadow?”
“You are a giant,” said the marquise, “whom a viper is
trying to bite in the heel.”
Pellisson continued to drag Fouquet to the carriage. “To the
Palais at full speed!” cried Pellisson to the coachman. The
horses set off like lightning; no obstacle relaxed their
pace for an instant. Only, at the arcade Saint-Jean, as they
were coming out upon the Place de Greve, a long file of
horsemen, barring the narrow passage, stopped the carriage
of the superintendent. There was no means of forcing this
barrier; it was necessary to wait till the mounted archers
of the watch, for it was they who stopped the way, had
passed with the heavy carriage they were escorting, and
which ascended rapidly towards the Place Baudoyer. Fouquet
and Pellisson took no further account of this circumstance
beyond deploring the minute’s delay they had thus to submit
to. They entered the habitation of the concierge du Palais
five minutes after. That officer was still walking about in
the front court. At the name of Fouquet, whispered in his