imself up in his chair.

"Pardon me, Monsieur d'Artagnan," said he, "if I did not myself receive
you when coming in the king's name." And he pronounced the last words
with a sort of melancholy firmness, which filled the hearts of all his
friends with terror.

"Monseigneur," replied D'Artagnan, "I only come to you in the king's
name to demand payment of an order for two hundred pistoles."

The clouds passed from every brow but that of Fouquet, which still
remained overcast.

"Ah! then," said he, "perhaps you also are setting out for Nantes?"

"I do not know whither I am setting out, monseigneur."

"But," said Madame Fouquet, recovered from her fright, "you are not
going so soon, monsieur le capitaine, as not to do us the honor to take
a seat with us?"

"Madame, I should esteem that a great honor done me, but I am so
pressed for time, that, you see, I have been obliged to permit myself to
interrupt your repast to procure payment of my note."

"The reply to which shall be gold," said Fouquet, making a sign to his
intendant, who went out with the order D'Artagnan handed him.

"Oh!" said the latter, "I was not uneasy about the payment; the house is
good."

A painful smile passed over the pale features of Fouquet.

"Are you in pain?" asked Madame de Belliere.

"Do you feel your attack coming on?" asked Madame Fouquet.

"Neither, thank you both," said Fouquet.

"Your attack?" said D'Artagnan, in his turn; "are you unwell,
monseigneur?"

"I have a tertian fever, which seized me after the _fete_ at Vaux."

"Caught cold in the grottos, at night, perhaps?"

"No, no; nothing but agitation, that was all."

"The too much heart you displayed in your reception of the king,"
said La Fontaine, quietly, without suspicion that he was uttering a
sacrilege.

"We cannot devote too much heart to the reception of our king," said
Fouquet, mildly, to his poet.

"Monsieur meant to say the too great ardor," interrupted D'Artagnan,
with perfect frankness and much amenity. "The fact is, monseigneur, that
hospitality was never practiced as at Vaux."

Madame Fouquet permitted her countenance to show clearly that if Fouquet
had conducted himself well towards the king, the king had hardly done
the like to the minister. But D'Artagnan knew the terrible secret. He
alone with Fouquet knew it; those two men had not, the one the courage
to complain, the other the right to accuse. The captain, to whom the
two hundred pistoles were br