The Man in the Iron Mask

“If that be the case, monseigneur, it is very difficult.”

“You will arrest me, then?”

“No, but I shall go along with you.”

“That is quite sufficient, Monsieur d’Artagnan,” returned Fouquet, coldly. “It was not for nothing you acquired your reputation as a man of intelligence and resource; but with me all this is quite superfluous. Let us come to the point. Do me a service. Why do you arrest me? What have I done?”

“Oh! I know nothing about what you may have done; but I do not arrest you – this evening, at least!”

“This evening!” said Fouquet, turning pale, “but to-morrow?”

“It is not to-morrow just yet, monseigneur. Who can ever answer for the morrow?”

“Quick, quick, captain! let me speak to M. d’Herblay.”

“Alas! that is quite impossible, monseigneur. I have strict orders to see that you hold no communication with any one.”

“With M. d’Herblay, captain – with your friend!”

“Monseigneur, is M. d’Herblay the only person with whom you ought to be prevented holding any communication?”

Fouquet colored, and then assuming an air of resignation, he said: “You are right, monsieur; you have taught me a lesson I ought not to have evoked. A fallen man cannot assert his right to anything, even from those whose fortunes he may have made; for a still stronger reason, he cannot claim anything from those to whom he may never have had the happiness of doing a service.”

“Monseigneur!”

“It is perfectly true, Monsieur d’Artagnan; you have always acted in the most admirable manner towards me – in such a manner, indeed, as most becomes the man who is destined to arrest me. You, at least, have never asked me anything.”

“Monsieur,” replied the Gascon, touched by his eloquent and noble tone of grief, “will you – I ask it as a favor – pledge me your word as a man of honor that you will not leave this room?”

“What is the use of it, dear Monsieur d’Artagnan, since you keep watch and ward over me? Do you suppose I should contend against the most valiant sword in the kingdom?”

“It is not that, at all, monseigneur; but that I am going to look for M. d’Herblay, and, consequently, to leave you alone.”

Fouquet uttered a cry of delight and surprise.

“To look for M. d’Herblay! to leave me alone!” he exclaimed, clasping his hands together.

“Which is M. d’Herblay’s room? The blue room is it not?”

“Yes, my friend, yes.”

“Your friend! thank you for that word, monseigneur; you confer it upon me to-day, at least, if you have never done so before.”

“Ah! you have saved me.”

“It will take a good ten minutes to go from hence to the blue room, and to return?” said D’Artagnan.

“Nearly so.”

“And then to wake Aramis, who sleeps very soundly, when he is asleep, I put that down at another five minutes; making a total of fifteen minutes’ absence. And now, monseigneur, give me your word that you will not in any way attempt to make your escape, and that when I return I shall find you here again.”

“I give it, monsieur,” replied Fouquet, with an expression of the warmest and deepest gratitude.

D’Artagnan disappeared. Fouquet looked at him as he quitted the room, waited with a feverish impatience until the door was closed behind him, and as soon as it was shut, flew to his keys, opened two or three secret doors concealed in various articles of furniture in the room, looked vainly for certain papers, which doubtless he had left at Saint-Mande, and which he seemed to regret not having found in them; then hurriedly seizing hold of letters, contracts, papers, writings, he heaped them up into a pile, which he burnt in the extremest haste upon the marble hearth of the fireplace, not even taking time to draw from the interior of it the vases and pots of flowers with which it was filled. As soon as he had finished, like a man who has just escaped an imminent danger, and whose strength abandons him as soon as the danger is past, he sank down, completely overcome, on a couch. When D’Artagnan returned, he found Fouquet in the same position; the worthy musketeer had not the slightest doubt that Fouquet, having given his word, would not even think of failing to keep it, but he had thought it most likely that Fouquet would turn his (D’Artagnan’s) absence to the best advantage in getting rid of all the papers, memorandums, and contracts, which might possibly render his position, which was even now serious enough, more dangerous than ever. And so, lifting up his head like a dog who has regained the scent, he perceived an odor resembling smoke he had relied on finding in the atmosphere, and having found it, made a movement of his head in token of satisfaction. As D’Artagnan entered, Fouquet, on his side, raised his head, and not one of D’Artagnan’s movements escaped him. And then the looks of the two men met, and they both saw that they had understood each other without exchanging a syllable.

“Well!” asked Fouquet, the first to speak, “and M. d’Herblay?”

“Upon my word, monseigneur,” replied D’Artagnan, “M. d’Herblay must be desperately fond of walking out at night, and composing verses by moonlight in the park of Vaux, with some of your poets, in all probability, for he is not in his own room.”

“What! not in his own room?” cried Fouquet, whose last hope thus escaped him; for unless he could ascertain in what way the bishop of Vannes could assist him, he perfectly well knew that he could expect assistance from no other quarter.

“Or, indeed,” continued D’Artagnan, “if he is in his own room, he has very good reasons for not answering.”

“But surely you did not call him in such a manner that he could have heard you?”

“You can hardly suppose, monseigneur, that having already exceeded my orders, which forbade me leaving you a single moment – you can hardly suppose, I say, that I should have been mad enough to rouse the whole house and allow myself to be seen in the corridor of the bishop of Vannes, in order that M. Colbert might state with positive certainty that I gave you time to burn your papers.”

“My papers?”

“Of course; at least that is what I should have done in your place. When any one opens a door for me I always avail myself of it.”

“Yes, yes, and I thank you, for I have availed myself of it.”

“And you have done perfectly right. Every man has his own peculiar secrets with which others have nothing to do. But let us return to Aramis, monseigneur.”

“Well, then, I tell you, you could not have called loud enough, or Aramis would have heard you.”

“However softly any one may call Aramis, monseigneur, Aramis always hears when he has an interest in hearing. I repeat what I said before – Aramis was not in his own room, or Aramis had certain reasons for not recognizing my voice, of which I am ignorant, and of which you may be even ignorant yourself, notwithstanding your liege-man is His Greatness the Lord Bishop of Vannes.”

Fouquet drew a deep sigh, rose from his seat, took three or four turns in his room, and finished by seating himself, with an expression of extreme dejection, upon his magnificent bed with velvet hangings, and costliest lace. D’Artagnan looked at Fouquet with feelings of the deepest and sincerest pity.

“I have seen a good many men arrested in my life,” said the musketeer, sadly; “I have seen both M. de Cinq-Mars and M. de Chalais arrested, though I was very young then. I have seen M. de Conde arrested with the princes; I have seen M. de Retz arrested; I have seen M. Broussel arrested. Stay a moment, monseigneur, it is disagreeable to have to say, but the very one of all those whom you most resemble at this moment was that poor fellow Broussel. You were very near doing as he did, putting your dinner napkin in your portfolio, and wiping your mouth with your papers. Mordioux! Monseigneur Fouquet, a man like you ought not to be dejected in this manner. Suppose your friends saw you?”

“Monsieur d’Artagnan,” returned the surintendant, with a smile full of gentleness, “you do not understand me; it is precisely because my friends are not looking on, that I am as you see me now. I do not live, exist even, isolated from others; I am nothing when left to myself. Understand that throughout my whole life I have passed every moment of my time in making friends, whom I hoped to render my stay and support. In times of prosperity, all these cheerful, happy voices – rendered so through and by my means – formed in my honor a concert of praise and kindly actions. In the least disfavor, these humbler voices accompanied in harmonious accents the murmur of my own heart. Isolation I have never yet known. Poverty (a phantom I have sometimes beheld, clad in rags, awaiting me at the end of my journey through life) – poverty has been the specter with which many of my own friends have trifled for years past, which they poetize and caress, and which has attracted me towards them. Poverty! I accept it, acknowledge it, receive it, as a disinherited sister; for poverty is neither solitude, nor exile, nor imprisonment. Is it likely I shall ever be poor, with such friends as Pelisson, as La Fontaine, as Moliere? with such a mistress as – Oh! if you knew how utterly lonely and desolate I feel at this moment, and how you, who separate me from all I love, seem to resemble the image of solitude, of annihilation – death itself.”

“But I have already told you, Monsieur Fouquet,” replied D’Artagnan, moved to the depths of his soul, “that you are woefully exaggerating. The king likes you.”

“No, no,” said Fouquet, shaking his head.

“M. Colbert hates you.”

“M. Colbert! What does that matter to me?”

“He will ruin you.”

“Ah! I defy him to do that, for I am ruined already.”

At this singular confession of the superintendent, D’Artagnan cast his glance all round the room; and although he did not open his lips, Fouquet understood him so thoroughly, that he added: “What can be done with such wealth of substance as surrounds us, when a man can no longer cultivate his taste for the magnificent? Do you know what good the greater part of the wealth and the possessions which we rich enjoy, confer upon us? merely to disgust us, by their very splendor even, with everything which does not equal it! Vaux! you will say, and the wonders of Vaux! What of it? What boot these wonders? If I am ruined, how shall I fill with water the urns which my Naiads bear in their arms, or force the air into the lungs of my Tritons? To be rich enough, Monsieur d’Artagnan, a man must be too rich.”