The Man in the Iron Mask Part 76

The d.u.c.h.esse bit her nails.

"Besides," continued Colbert, "what a poor capture would this bishop be!

A bishop game for a king! Oh! no, no; I will not even take the slightest notice of him."

The hatred of the d.u.c.h.esse now discovered itself.

"Game for a woman!" said she. "Is not the queen a woman? If she wishes M. d'Herblay arrested, she has her reasons. Besides, is not M. d'Herblay the friend of him who is doomed to fall?"

"Oh! never mind that," said Colbert. "This man shall be spared, if he is not the enemy of the king. Is that displeasing to you?"

"I say nothing."

"Yes--you wish to see him in prison, in the Bastile, for instance."

"I believe a secret better concealed behind the walls of the Bastile than behind those of Belle-Isle."

"I will speak to the king about it; he will clear up the point."

"And whilst waiting for that enlightenment, Monsieur l'Eveque de Vannes will have escaped. I would do so."

"Escaped! he! and whither should he escape? Europe is ours, in will, if not in fact."

"He will always find an asylum, monsieur. It is evident you know nothing of the man you have to do with. You do not know D'Herblay; you do not know Aramis. He was one of those four musketeers who, under the late king, made Cardinal de Richelieu tremble, and who, during the regency, gave so much trouble to Monseigneur Mazarin."

"But, madame, what can he do, unless he has a kingdom to back him?"

"He has one, monsieur."

"A kingdom, he! what, Monsieur d'Herblay?"

"I repeat to you, monsieur, that if he wants a kingdom, he either has it or will have it."

"Well, as you are so earnest that this rebel should not escape, madame, I promise you he shall not escape."

"Belle-Isle is fortified, M. Colbert, and fortified by him."

"If Belle-Isle were also defended by him, Belle-Isle is not impregnable; and if Monsieur l'Eveque de Vannes is shut up in Belle-Isle, well, madame, the place shall be besieged, and he will be taken."

"You may be very certain, monsieur, that the zeal you display in the interest of the queen-mother will please her majesty mightily, and you will be magnificently rewarded; but what shall I tell her of your projects respecting this man?"

"That when once taken, he shall be shut up in a fortress from which her secret shall never escape."

"Very well, Monsieur Colbert, and we may say, that, dating from this instant, we have formed a solid alliance, that is, you and I, and that I am absolutely at your service."

"It is I, madame, who place myself at yours. This Chevalier d'Herblay is a kind of Spanish spy, is he not?"

"Much more."

"A secret amba.s.sador?"

"Higher still."

"Stop--King Phillip III. of Spain is a bigot. He is, perhaps, the confessor of Phillip III."

"You must go higher even than that."

"_Mordieu!_" cried Colbert, who forgot himself so far as to swear in the presence of this great lady, of this old friend of the queen-mother. "He must then be the general of the Jesuits."

"I believe you have guessed it at last," replied the d.u.c.h.esse.

"Ah! then, madame, this man will ruin us all if we do not ruin him; and we must make haste, too."

"Such was my opinion, monsieur, but I did not dare to give it you."

"And it was lucky for us he has attacked the throne, and not us."

"But, mark this well, M. Colbert. M. d'Herblay is never discouraged; if he has missed one blow, he will be sure to make another; he will begin again. If he has allowed an opportunity to escape of making a king for himself, sooner or later, he will make another, of whom, to a certainty, you will not be prime minister."

Colbert knitted his brow with a menacing expression. "I feel a.s.sured that a prison will settle this affair for us, madame, in a manner satisfactory for both."

The d.u.c.h.esse smiled again.

"Oh! if you knew," said she, "how many times Aramis has got out of prison!"

"Oh!" replied Colbert, "we will take care that he shall not get out _this_ time."

"But you were not attending to what I said to you just now. Do you remember that Aramis was one of the four invincibles whom Richelieu so dreaded? And at that period the four musketeers were not in possession of that which they have now--money and experience."

Colbert bit his lips.

"We will renounce the idea of the prison," said he, in a lower tone: "we will find a little retreat from which the invincible cannot possibly escape."

"That was well spoken, our ally!" replied the d.u.c.h.esse. "But it is getting late; had we not better return?"

"The more willingly, madame, from my having my preparations to make for setting out with the king."

"To Paris!" cried the d.u.c.h.esse to the coachman.

And the carriage returned towards the Faubourg Saint Antoine, after the conclusion of the treaty that gave to death the last friend of Fouquet, the last defender of Belle-Isle, the former friend of Marie Michon, the new foe of the old d.u.c.h.esse.

Chapter x.x.xVII. The Two Lighters.

D'Artagnan had set off; Fouquet likewise was gone, and with a rapidity which doubled the tender interest of his friends. The first moments of this journey, or better say, this flight, were troubled by a ceaseless dread of every horse and carriage to be seen behind the fugitive. It was not natural, in fact, if Louis XIV. was determined to seize this prey, that he should allow it to escape; the young lion was already accustomed to the chase, and he had bloodhounds sufficiently clever to be trusted.

But insensibly all fears were dispersed; the surintendant, by hard traveling, placed such a distance between himself and his persecutors, that no one of them could reasonably be expected to overtake him. As to his position, his friends had made it excellent for him. Was he not traveling to join the king at Nantes, and what did the rapidity prove but his zeal to obey? He arrived, fatigued, but rea.s.sured, at Orleans, where he found, thanks to the care of a courier who had preceded him, a handsome lighter of eight oars. These lighters, in the shape of gondolas, somewhat wide and heavy, containing a small chamber, covered by the deck, and a chamber in the p.o.o.p, formed by a tent, then acted as pa.s.sage-boats from Orleans to Nantes, by the Loire, and this pa.s.sage, a long one in our days, appeared then more easy and convenient than the high-road, with its post-hacks and its ill-hung carriages. Fouquet went on board this lighter, which set out immediately. The rowers, knowing they had the honor of conveying the surintendant of the finances, pulled with all their strength, and that magic word, the _finances_, promised them a liberal gratification, of which they wished to prove themselves worthy. The lighter seemed to leap the mimic waves of the Loire.

Magnificent weather, a sunrise that empurpled all the landscape, displayed the river in all its limpid serenity. The current and the rowers carried Fouquet along as wings carry a bird, and he arrived before Beaugency without the slightest accident having signalized the voyage. Fouquet hoped to be the first to arrive at Nantes; there he would see the notables and gain support among the princ.i.p.al members of the States; he would make himself a necessity, a thing very easy for a man of his merit, and would delay the catastrophe, if he did not succeed in avoiding it entirely. "Besides," said Gourville to him, "at Nantes, you will make out, or we will make out, the intentions of your enemies; we will have horses always ready to convey you to Poitou, a bark in which to gain the sea, and when once upon the open sea, Belle-Isle is your inviolable port. You see, besides, that no one is watching you, no one is following." He had scarcely finished when they discovered at a distance, behind an elbow formed by the river, the masts of a huge lighter coming down. The rowers of Fouquet's boat uttered a cry of surprise on seeing this galley.