“Yes; but still, my dear bishop, I believe you are exaggerating the importance of the affair.”
“Blind, how blind you are!” murmured Aramis.
“La Vallière,” returned Fouquet, “whom we assume to be a schemer of the first ability, is simply nothing more than a coquette, who hopes that I shall pay my court to her, because I have already done so, and who, now that she has received a confirmation of the king’s regard, hopes to keep me in leading strings with the letter. It is natural enough.”
Aramis shook his head.
“Is not that your opinion?” said Fouquet.
“She is not a coquette,” he replied.
“Allow me to tell you—”
“Oh! I am well enough acquainted with women who are coquettes,” said Aramis.
“My dear friend!”
“It is a long time ago since I finished my education, you mean. But women are the same, throughout the centuries.”
“True; but men change, and you at the present day are far more suspicious than you formerly were.” And then, beginning to laugh, he added, “Come, if La Vallière is willing to love me only to the extent of a third, and the king two-thirds, do you think the condition acceptable?”
Aramis rose impatiently. “La Vallière,” he said, “has never loved, and never will love, anyone but the king.”
“At all events,” said Fouquet, “what would you do?”
“Ask me rather what I would have done?”
“Well! what would you have done?”
“In the first place, I should not have allowed that man to depart.”
“Toby?”
“Yes; Toby is a traitor. Nay, I am sure of it, and I would not have let him go until he had told me the truth.”
“There is still time. I will recall him, and do you question him in your turn.”
“Agreed.”
“But I assure you it is useless. He has been with me for twenty years, and has never made the slightest mistake, and yet,” added Fouquet, laughing, “it would have been easy enough for him to have done so.”
“Still, call him back. This morning I fancy I saw that face, in earnest conversation with one of M. Colbert’s men.”
“Where was that?”
“Opposite the stables.”
“Bah! all my people are at daggers drawn with that fellow.”
“I saw him, I tell you, and his face, which should have been unknown to me when he entered just now, struck me as disagreeably familiar.”
“Why did you not say something, then, while he was here?”
“Because it is only at this very minute that my memory is clear upon the subject.”
“Really,” said Fouquet, “you alarm me.” And he again rang the bell.
“Provided that it is not already too late,” said Aramis.
Fouquet once more rang impatiently. The valet usually in attendance appeared. “Toby!” said Fouquet, “send Toby.” The valet again shut the door.
“You leave me at perfect liberty, I suppose?”
“Entirely so.”
“I may employ all means, then, to ascertain the truth.”
“All.”
“Intimidation, even?”
“I constitute you public prosecutor in my place.”
They waited ten minutes longer, but uselessly, and Fouquet, thoroughly out of patience, again rang loudly.
“Toby!” he exclaimed.
“Monseigneur,” said the valet, “they are looking for him.”
“He cannot be far distant, I have not given him any commission to execute.”
“I will go and see, Monseigneur,” replied the valet, as he closed the door. Aramis, during the interview, walked impatiently, but without a syllable, up and down the cabinet. They waited a further ten minutes. Fouquet rang in a manner to alarm the very dead. The valet again presented himself, trembling in a way to induce a belief that he was the bearer of bad news.
“Monseigneur is mistaken,” he said, before even Fouquet could interrogate him, “you must have given Toby some commission, for he has been to the stables and taken your lordship’s swiftest horse, and saddled it himself.”
“Well?”
“And he has gone off.”
“Gone!” exclaimed Fouquet. “Let him be pursued, let him be captured.”
“Nay, nay,” whispered Aramis, taking him by the hand, “be calm, the evil is done.”
The valet quietly went out.
“The evil is done, you say?”
“No doubt; I was sure of it. And now, let us give no cause for suspicion; we must calculate the result of the blow, and ward it off, if possible.”
“After all,” said Fouquet, “the evil is not great.”
“You think so?” said Aramis.
“Of course. Surely a man is allowed to write a love-letter to a woman.”
“A man, certainly; a subject, no; especially, too, when the woman in question is one with whom the king is in love.”
“But the king was not in love with La Vallière a week ago! he was not in love with her yesterday, and the letter is dated yesterday; I could not guess the king was in love, when the king’s affection was not even yet in existence.”
“As you please,” replied Aramis; “but unfortunately the letter is not dated, and it is that circumstance particularly which annoys me. If it had only been dated yesterday, I should not have the slightest shadow of uneasiness on your account.”
Fouquet shrugged his shoulders.
“Am I not my own master,” he said, “and is the king, then, king of my brain and of my flesh?”
“You are right,” replied Aramis, “do not let us attach greater importance to matters than is necessary; and besides … Well! if we are menaced, we have means of defense.”
“Oh! menaced!” said Fouquet, “you do not place this gnat bite, as it were, among the number of menaces which may compromise my fortune and my life, do you?”
“Do not forget, Monsieur Fouquet, that the bit of an insect can kill a giant, if the insect be venomous.”
“But has this sovereign power you were speaking of, already vanished?”
“I am all-powerful, it is true, but I am not immortal.”
“Come, then, the most pressing matter is to find Toby again, I suppose. Is not that your opinion?”
“Oh! as
