of clothes worth a thousand pistoles, but he had satisfied, more
than satisfied, Lebrun. It was a happy moment for the artist; it was an
unhappy moment for M. Percerin, who was walking behind Fouquet, and was
engaged in admiring, in Lebrun's painting, the suit that he had made for
his majesty, a perfect _objet d'art_, as he called it, which was not to
be matched except in the wardrobe of the surintendant. His distress and
his exclamations were interrupted by a signal which had been given
from the summit of the mansion. In the direction of Melun, in the
still empty, open plain, the sentinels of Vaux had just perceived
the advancing procession of the king and the queens. His majesty was
entering Melun with his long train of carriages and cavaliers.

"In an hour--" said Aramis to Fouquet.

"In an hour!" replied the latter, sighing.

"And the people who ask one another what is the good of these royal
_fetes!_" continued the bishop of Vannes, laughing, with his false
smile.

"Alas! I, too, who am not the people, ask myself the same thing."

"I will answer you in four and twenty hours, monseigneur. Assume a
cheerful countenance, for it should be a day of true rejoicing."

"Well, believe me or not, as you like, D'Herblay," said the
surintendant, with a swelling heart, pointing at the _cortege_ of Louis,
visible in the horizon, "he certainly loves me but very little, and I do
not care much more for him; but I cannot tell you how it is, that since
he is approaching my house--"

"Well, what?"

"Well, since I know he is on his way here, as my guest, he is more
sacred than ever for me; he is my acknowledged sovereign, and as such is
very dear to me."

"Dear? yes," said Aramis, playing upon the word, as the Abbe Terray did,
at a later period, with Louis XV.

"Do not laugh, D'Herblay; I feel that, if he really seemed to wish it, I
could love that young man."

"You should not say that to me," returned Aramis, "but rather to M.
Colbert."

"To M. Colbert!" exclaimed Fouquet. "Why so?"

"Because he would allow you a pension out of the king's privy purse,
as soon as he becomes surintendant," said Aramis, preparing to leave as
soon as he had dealt this last blow.

"Where are you going?" returned Fouquet, with a gloomy look.

"To my own apartment, in order to change my costume, monseigneur."

"Whereabouts are you lodging, D'Herblay?"

"In the blue room on the second story."

"The room immediately over the king's room