The Abbe Fouquet.
Fouquet hastened back to his apartment by the subterranean passage, and immediately closed the mirror with the spring. He was scarcely in his closet, when he heard some one knocking violently at the door, and a well-known voice crying: - "Open the door, monseigneur, I entreat you, open the door!" Fouquet quickly restored a little order to everything that might have revealed either his absence or his agitation: he spread his papers over the desk, took up a pen, and, to gain time, said, through the closed door, - "Who is there?"
"What, monseigneur, do you not know me?" replied the voice.
"Yes, yes," said Fouquet to himself, "yes, my friend, I know you well enough." And then, aloud: "Is it not Gourville?"
"Why, yes, monseigneur."
Fouquet arose, cast a look at one of his glasses, went to the door, pushed back the bolt, and Gourville entered. "Ah! monseigneur! monseigneur!" cried he, "what cruelty!"
"In what?"
"I have been a quarter of an hour imploring you to open the door, and you would not even answer me."
"Once and for all, you know that I will not be disturbed when I am busy.
Now, although I might make you an exception, Gourville, I insist upon my orders being respected by others."
"Monseigneur, at this moment, orders, doors, bolts, locks, and walls I could have broken, forced and overthrown!"
"Ah! ah! it relates to some great event, then?" asked Fouquet.
"Oh! I assure you it does, monseigneur," replied Gourville.
"And what is this event?" said Fouquet, a little troubled by the evident agitation of his most intimate confidant.
"There is a secret chamber of justice instituted, monseigneur."
"I know there is, but do the members meet, Gourville?"
"They not only meet, but they have passed a sentence, monseigneur."
"A sentence?" said the superintendent, with a shudder and pallor he could not conceal. "A sentence! - and on whom?"
"Two of your best friends."
"Lyodot and D'Eymeris, do you mean? But what sort of a sentence?"
"Sentence of death."
"Passed? Oh! you must be mistaken, Gourville; that is impossible."
"Here is a copy of the sentence which the king is to sign 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? You 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. "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 disappearances 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 in his chamber with an uneasiness that became more and more serious.
"What do you decide upon, monseigneur?" said Gourville.
"If it were really as easy 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, 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."