"Will your majesty do me the honor to pa.s.s a few days with me at Dampierre?"
"Is that all?" said the queen, stupefied. "Nothing more than that?"
"Good heavens! can you possibly imagine that, in asking you that, I am not asking you the greatest conceivable favor? If that really be the case, you do not know me. Will you accept?"
"Yes, gladly. And I shall be happy," continued the queen, with some suspicion, "if my presence can in any way be useful to you."
"Useful!" exclaimed the d.u.c.h.esse, laughing; "oh, no, no, agreeable--delightful, if you like; and you promise me, then?"
"I swear it," said the queen, whereupon the d.u.c.h.esse seized her beautiful hand, and covered it with kisses. The queen could not help murmuring to herself, "She is a good-hearted woman, and very generous, too."
"Will your majesty consent to wait a fortnight before you come?"
"Certainly; but why?"
"Because," said the d.u.c.h.esse, "knowing me to be in disgrace, no one would lend me the hundred thousand francs, which I require to put Dampierre into a state of repair. But when it is known that I require that sum for the purpose of receiving your majesty at Dampierre properly, all the money in Paris will be at my disposal."
"Ah!" said the queen, gently nodding her head in sign of intelligence, "a hundred thousand francs! you want a hundred thousand francs to put Dampierre into repair?"
"Quite as much as that."
"And no one will lend you them?"
"No one."
"I will lend them to you, if you like, d.u.c.h.esse."
"Oh, I hardly dare accept such a sum."
"You would be wrong if you did _not_. Besides, a hundred thousand francs is really not much. I know but too well that you never set a right value upon your silence and secrecy. Push that table a little towards me, d.u.c.h.esse, and I will write you an order on M. Colbert; no, on M.
Fouquet, who is a far more courteous and obliging man."
"Will he pay it, though?"
"If he will not pay it, I will; but it will be the first time he will have refused me."
The queen wrote and handed the d.u.c.h.esse the order, and afterwards dismissed her with a warm embrace.
Chapter XLV. How Jean de La Fontaine Came to Write His First Tale.
All these intrigues are exhausted; the human mind, so variously complicated, has been enabled to develop itself at its ease in the three outlines with which our recital has supplied it. It is not unlikely that, in the future we are now preparing, a question of politics and intrigues may still arise, but the springs by which they work will be so carefully concealed that no one will be able to see aught but flowers and paintings, just as at a theater, where a colossus appears upon the scene, walking along moved by the small legs and slender arms of a child concealed within the framework.
We now return to Saint-Mande, where the superintendent was in the habit of receiving his select confederacy of epicureans. For some time past the host had met with nothing but trouble. Every one in the house was aware of and felt for the minister"s distress. No more magnificent or recklessly improvident _reunions_. Money had been the pretext a.s.signed by Fouquet, and never _was_ any pretext, as Gourville said, more fallacious, for there was not even a shadow of money to be seen.
M. Vatel was resolutely painstaking in keeping up the reputation of the house, and yet the gardeners who supplied the kitchens complained of ruinous delays. The agents for the supply of Spanish wines sent drafts which no one honored; fishermen, whom the superintendent engaged on the coast of Normandy, calculated that if they were paid all that was due to them, the amount would enable them to retire comfortably for life; fish, which, at a later period, was the cause of Vatel"s death, did not arrive at all. However, on the ordinary reception days, Fouquet"s friends flocked in more numerously than ever. Gourville and the Abbe Fouquet talked over money matters--that is to say, the abbe borrowed a few pistoles from Gourville; Pelisson, seated with his legs crossed, was engaged in finishing the peroration of a speech with which Fouquet was to open the parliament; and this speech was a masterpiece, because Pelisson wrote it for his friend--that is to say, he inserted all kinds of clever things the latter would most certainly never have taken the trouble to say of his own accord. Presently Loret and La Fontaine would enter from the garden, engaged in a dispute about the art of making verses. The painters and musicians, in their turn, were hovering near the dining-room. As soon as eight o"clock struck the supper would be announced, for the superintendent never kept any one waiting. It was already half-past seven, and the appet.i.tes of the guests were beginning to declare themselves in an emphatic manner. As soon as all the guests were a.s.sembled, Gourville went straight up to Pelisson, awoke him out of his reverie, and led him into the middle of a room, and closed the doors. "Well," he said, "anything new?"
Pelisson raised his intelligent and gentle face, and said: "I have borrowed five and twenty thousand francs of my aunt, and I have them here in good sterling money."
"Good," replied Gourville; "we only what one hundred and ninety-five thousand livres for the first payment."
"The payment of what?" asked La Fontaine.
"What! absent-minded as usual! Why, it was you who told us the small estate at Corbeli was going to be sold by one of M. Fouquet"s creditors; and you, also, who proposed that all his friends should subscribe--more than that, it was you who said that you would sell a corner of your house at Chateau-Thierry, in order to furnish your own proportion, and you come and ask--"_The payment of what?_""
This remark was received with a general laugh, which made La Fontaine blush. "I beg your pardon," he said, "I had not forgotten it; oh, no!
only--"
"Only you remembered nothing about it," replied Loret.
"That is the truth, and the fact is, he is quite right, there is a great difference between forgetting and not remembering."
"Well, then," added Pelisson, "you bring your mite in the shape of the price of the piece of land you have sold?"
"Sold? no!"
"Have you not sold the field, then?" inquired Gourville, in astonishment, for he knew the poet"s disinterestedness.
"My wife would not let me," replied the latter, at which there were fresh bursts of laughter.
"And yet you went to Chateau-Thierry for that purpose," said some one.
"Certainly I did, and on horseback."
"Poor fellow!"
"I had eight different horses, and I was almost b.u.mped to death."
"You are an excellent fellow! And you rested yourself when you arrived there?"
"Rested! Oh! of course I did, for I had an immense deal of work to do."
"How so?"
"My wife had been flirting with the man to whom I wished to sell the land. The fellow drew back from his bargain, and so I challenged him."
"Very good, and you fought?"
"It seems not."
"You know nothing about it, I suppose?"
"No, my wife and her relations interfered in the matter. I was kept a quarter of an hour with my sword in my hand; but I was not wounded."
"And your adversary?"
"Oh! he wasn"t wounded either, for he never came on the field."