The valet usually in attendance
appeared. "Toby!" said Fouquet, "send Toby." The valet again shut the
door.

"You leave me at perfect liberty, I suppose?"

"Entirely so."

"I may employ all means, then, to ascertain the truth."

"All."

"Intimidation, even?"

"I constitute you public prosecutor in my place."

They waited ten minutes longer, but uselessly, and Fouquet, thoroughly
out of patience, again rang loudly. "Toby!" he exclaimed.

"Monseigneur," said the valet, "they are looking for him."

"He cannot be far distant, I have not given him any commission to
execute."

"I will go and see, monseigneur," replied the valet, as he closed the
door. Aramis, during this interval, walked impatiently but silently up
and down the cabinet. Again they waited another ten minutes. Fouquet
rang in a manner to awaken the very dead. The valet again presented
himself, trembling in a way to induce a belief that he was the bearer of
bad news.

"Monseigneur is mistaken," he said, before even Fouquet could
interrogate him; "you must have given Toby some commission, for he has
been to the stables and taken your lordship's swiftest horse, and
saddled it himself."

"Well?"

"And he has gone off."

"Gone!" exclaimed Fouquet. "Let him be pursued, let him be captured."

"Nay, nay," said Aramis, taking him by the hand, "be calm, the evil is
done now."

"The evil is done, you say?"

"No doubt; I was sure of it. And now, let us give no cause for
suspicion; we must calculate the result of the blow, and ward it off, if
possible."

"After all," said Fouquet, "the evil is not great."

"You think so," said Aramis.

"Of course. Surely a man is allowed to write a love-letter to a woman."

"A man, certainly; a subject, no; especially, too, when the woman in
question is one with whom the king is in love."

"But the king was not in love with La Valliere a week ago! he was not in
love with her yesterday, and the letter is dated yesterday; I could not
guess the king was in love, when the king's affection was not even yet
in existence."

"As you please," replied Aramis; "but unfortunately the letter is not
dated, and it is that circumstance particularly which annoys me. If it
had only been dated yesterday, I should not have the slightest shadow of
uneasiness on your account." Fouquet shrugged his shoulders.

"Am I not my own master," he said, "and is the king, then, king of my
brain and of my flesh?"

"You are right," replie