to-day, if he has not already signed it.”
Fouquet seized the paper eagerly, read it, and returned it
to Gourville. “The king will never sign that,” said he.
Gourville shook his head.
“Monseigneur, M. Colbert is a bold councilor: do not be too
confident!”
“Monsieur Colbert again!” cried Fouquet. “How is it that
that name rises upon all occasions to torment my ears,
during the last two or three days? Thou make so trifling a
subject of too much importance, Gourville. Let M. Colbert
appear, I will face him; let him raise his head, I will
crush him; but you understand, there must be an outline upon
which my look may fall, there must be a surface upon which
my feet may be placed.”
“Patience, monseigneur, for you do not know what Colbert is
— study him quickly; it is with this dark financier as it
is with meteors, which the eye never sees completely before
their disastrous invasion; when we feel them we are dead.”
“Oh! Gourville, this is going too far,” replied Fouquet,
smiling; “allow me, my friend, not to be so easily
frightened; M. Colbert a meteor! Corbleu, we confront the
meteor. Let us see acts, and not words. What has he done?”
“He has ordered two gibbets of the executioner of Paris,”
answered Gourville.
Fouquet raised his head, and a flash gleamed from his eyes.
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“Are you sure of what you say?” cried he.
“Here is the proof, monseigneur.” And Gourville held out to
the superintendent a note communicated by a certain
secretary of the Hotel de Ville, who was one of Fouquet’s
creatures.
“Yes, that is true,” murmured the minister; “the scaffold
may be prepared, but the king has not signed; Gourville, the
king will not sign.”
“I shall soon know,” said Gourville.
“How?”
“If the king has signed, the gibbets will be sent this
evening to the Hotel de Ville, in order to be got up and
ready by to-morrow morning.”
“Oh! no, no!” cried the superintendent once again; “you are
all deceived, and deceive me in my turn; Lyodot came to see
me only the day before yesterday; only three days ago I
received a present of some Syracuse wine from poor
D’Eymeris.”
“What does that prove?” replied Gourville, “except that the
chamber of justice has been secretly assembled, has
deliberated in the absence of the accused, and that the
whole proceeding was complete when they were arrested.”
“What! are they, then, arrested?”
“No doubt they are.”
“But where, when, and how have they been arrested?”
“Lyodot, yesterday at daybreak; D’Eymeris, the day before
yesterday, in the evening, as he was returning from the
house of his mistress; their disappearance had disturbed
nobody; but at length M. Colbert all at once raised the
mask, and caused the affair to be published; it is being
cried by sound of trumpet, at this moment in Paris, and, in
truth, monseigneur, there is scarcely anybody but yourself
ignorant of the event.”
Fouquet began to walk about his chamber with an uneasiness
that became more and more serious.
“What do you decide upon, monseigneur?” said Gourville.
“If it really were as you say, I would go to the king,”
cried Fouquet. “But as I go to the Louvre, I will pass by
the Hotel de Ville. We shall see if the sentence is signed.”
“Incredulity! thou art the pest of all great minds,” said
Gourville, shrugging his shoulders.
“Gourville!”
“Yes,” continued he, “and incredulity! thou ruinest, as
contagion destroys the most robust health, that is to say,
in an instant.”
“Let us go,” cried Fouquet; “desire the door to be opened,
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Gourville.”
“Be cautious,” said the latter, “the Abbe Fouquet is there.”
“Ah! my brother,” replied Fouquet, in a tone of annoyance,
“he is there, is he? he knows all the ill news, then, and is
rejoiced to bring it to me, as usual. The devil! if my
brother is there, my affairs are bad, Gourville; why did you
not tell me that sooner: I should have been the more readily
convinced.”
“‘Monseigneur calumniates him,” said Gourville, laughing,
“if he is come, it is not with a bad intention.”