"So?"
"I have done what was right, my friend, at the risk of my reputation.
Adieu!"
"Not adieu, au revoir!"
"Perhaps," said the marquise, giving her hand to Fouquet to kiss, and walking towards the door with so firm a step, that he did not dare to bar her pa.s.sage. As to Fouquet, he retook, with his head hanging down and a fixed cloud on his brow, the path of the subterranean pa.s.sage along which ran the metal wires that communicated from one house to the other, transmitting, through two gla.s.ses, the wishes and signals of hidden correspondents.
Chapter LV. The Abbe Fouquet.
Fouquet hastened back to his apartment by the subterranean pa.s.sage, and immediately closed the mirror with the spring. He was scarcely in his 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 gla.s.ses, 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 a.s.sure 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 inst.i.tuted, monseigneur."
"I know there is, but do the members meet, Gourville?"
"They not only meet, but they have pa.s.sed 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."
"Pa.s.sed? 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 a.s.sembled, 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 n.o.body; 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."