The Man in the Iron Mask

“An unfortunate circumstance for you,” said the king, in a less generous tone of voice.

“Such friendships, sire, had nothing dishonorable in them so long as I was ignorant of the crime.”

“You should have foreseen it.”

“If I am guilty, I place myself in your majesty’s hands.”

“Ah! Monsieur Fouquet, it was not that I meant,” returned the king, sorry to have shown the bitterness of his thought in such a manner. “Well! I assure you that, notwithstanding the mask with which the villain covered his face, I had something like a vague suspicion that he was the very man. But with this chief of the enterprise there was a man of prodigious strength, the one who menaced me with a force almost herculean; what is he?”

“It must be his friend the Baron du Vallon, formerly one of the musketeers.”

“The friend of D’Artagnan? the friend of the Comte de la Fere? Ah!” exclaimed the king, as he paused at the name of the latter, “we must not forget the connection that existed between the conspirators and M. de Bragelonne.”

“Sire, sire, do not go too far. M. de la Fere is the most honorable man in France. Be satisfied with those whom I deliver up to you.”

“With those whom you deliver up to me, you say? Very good, for you will deliver up those who are guilty to me.”

“What does your majesty understand by that?” inquired Fouquet.

“I understand,” replied the king, “that we shall soon arrive at Vaux with a large body of troops, that we will lay violent hands upon that nest of vipers, and that not a soul shall escape.”

“Your majesty will put these men to death!” cried Fouquet.

“To the very meanest of them.”

“Oh! sire.”

“Let us understand one another, Monsieur Fouquet,” said the king, haughtily. “We no longer live in times when assassination was the only and the last resource kings held in reservation at extremity. No, Heaven be praised! I have parliaments who sit and judge in my name, and I have scaffolds on which supreme authority is carried out.”

Fouquet turned pale. “I will take the liberty of observing to your majesty, that any proceedings instituted respecting these matters would bring down the greatest scandal upon the dignity of the throne. The august name of Anne of Austria must never be allowed to pass the lips of the people accompanied by a smile.”

“Justice must be done, however, monsieur.”

“Good, sire; but royal blood must not be shed upon a scaffold.”

“The royal blood! you believe that!” cried the king with fury in his voice, stamping his foot on the ground. “This double birth is an invention; and in that invention, particularly, do I see M. d’Herblay’s crime. It is the crime I wish to punish rather than the violence, or the insult.”

“And punish it with death, sire?”

“With death; yes, monsieur, I have said it.”

“Sire,” said the surintendant, with firmness, as he raised his head proudly, “your majesty will take the life, if you please, of your brother Philippe of France; that concerns you alone, and you will doubtless consult the queen-mother upon the subject. Whatever she may command will be perfectly correct. I do not wish to mix myself up in it, not even for the honor of your crown, but I have a favor to ask of you, and I beg to submit it to you.”

“Speak,” said the king, in no little degree agitated by his minister’s last words. “What do you require?”

“The pardon of M. d’Herblay and of M. du Vallon.”

“My assassins?”

“Two rebels, sire, that is all.”

“Oh! I understand, then, you ask me to forgive your friends.”

“My friends!” said Fouquet, deeply wounded.

“Your friends, certainly; but the safety of the state requires that an exemplary punishment should be inflicted on the guilty.”

“I will not permit myself to remind your majesty that I have just restored you to liberty, and have saved your life.”

“Monsieur!”

“I will not allow myself to remind your majesty that had M. d’Herblay wished to carry out his character of an assassin, he could very easily have assassinated your majesty this morning in the forest of Senart, and all would have been over.” The king started.

“A pistol-bullet through the head,” pursued Fouquet, “and the disfigured features of Louis XIV., which no one could have recognized, would be M. d’Herblay’s complete and entire justification.”

The king turned pale and giddy at the bare idea of the danger he had escaped.

“If M. d’Herblay,” continued Fouquet, “had been an assassin, he had no occasion to inform me of his plan in order to succeed. Freed from the real king, it would have been impossible in all futurity to guess the false. And if the usurper had been recognized by Anne of Austria, he would still have been – her son. The usurper, as far as Monsieur d’Herblay’s conscience was concerned, was still a king of the blood of Louis XIII. Moreover, the conspirator, in that course, would have had security, secrecy, impunity. A pistol-bullet would have procured him all that. For the sake of Heaven, sire, grant me his forgiveness.”

The king, instead of being touched by the picture, so faithfully drawn in all details, of Aramis’s generosity, felt himself most painfully and cruelly humiliated. His unconquerable pride revolted at the idea that a man had held suspended at the end of his finger the thread of his royal life. Every word that fell from Fouquet’s lips, and which he thought most efficacious in procuring his friend’s pardon, seemed to pour another drop of poison into the already ulcerated heart of Louis XIV. Nothing could bend or soften him. Addressing himself to Fouquet, he said, “I really don’t know, monsieur, why you should solicit the pardon of these men. What good is there in asking that which can be obtained without solicitation?”

“I do not understand you, sire.”

“It is not difficult, either. Where am I now?”

“In the Bastile, sire.”

“Yes; in a dungeon. I am looked upon as a madman, am I not?”

“Yes, sire.”

“And no one is known here but Marchiali?”

“Certainly.”

“Well; change nothing in the position of affairs. Let the poor madman rot between the slimy walls of the Bastile, and M. d’Herblay and M. du Vallon will stand in no need of my forgiveness. Their new king will absolve them.”

“Your majesty does me a great injustice, sire; and you are wrong,” replied Fouquet, dryly; “I am not child enough, nor is M. d’Herblay silly enough, to have omitted to make all these reflections; and if I had wished to make a new king, as you say, I had no occasion to have come here to force open the gates and doors of the Bastile, to free you from this place. That would show a want of even common sense. Your majesty’s mind is disturbed by anger; otherwise you would be far from offending, groundlessly, the very one of your servants who has rendered you the most important service of all.”

Louis perceived that he had gone too far; that the gates of the Bastile were still closed upon him, whilst, by degrees, the floodgates were gradually being opened, behind which the generous-hearted Fouquet had restrained his anger. “I did not say that to humiliate you, Heaven knows, monsieur,” he replied. “Only you are addressing yourself to me in order to obtain a pardon, and I answer according to my conscience. And so, judging by my conscience, the criminals we speak of are not worthy of consideration or forgiveness.”

Fouquet was silent.

“What I do is as generous,” added the king, “as what you have done, for I am in your power. I will even say it is more generous, inasmuch as you place before me certain conditions upon which my liberty, my life, may depend; and to reject which is to make a sacrifice of both.”

“I was wrong, certainly,” replied Fouquet. “Yes, – I had the appearance of extorting a favor; I regret it, and entreat your majesty’s forgiveness.”

“And you are forgiven, my dear Monsieur Fouquet,” said the king, with a smile, which restored the serene expression of his features, which so many circumstances had altered since the preceding evening.