ould nibble up
without a thought, was sufficient to recall to the memory of this great
monarch the mournful shade of the last surintendant of France.

With a perfect reliance that Aramis had made arrangements fairly to
distribute the vast number of guests throughout the palace, and that he
had not omitted to attend to any of the internal regulations for their
comfort, Fouquet devoted his entire attention to the _ensemble_ alone;
in one direction Gourville showed him the preparations which had been
made for the fireworks; in another, Moliere led him over the theater; at
last, after he had visited the chapel, the salons, and the galleries,
and was again going downstairs, exhausted with fatigue, Fouquet saw
Aramis on the staircase. The prelate beckoned to him. The surintendant
joined his friend, and, with him, paused before a large picture scarcely
finished. Applying himself heart and soul to his work, the painter,
Lebrun, covered with perspiration, stained with paint, pale from fatigue
and inspiration of genius, was putting the last finishing touches with
his rapid brush. It was the portrait of the king, whom they were
expecting, dressed in the court-suit which Percerin had condescended to
show beforehand to the bishop of Vannes. Fouquet placed himself before
this portrait, which seemed to live, as one might say, in the cool
freshness of its flesh, and in its warmth of color. He gazed upon it
long and fixedly, estimated the prodigious labor that had been bestowed
upon it, and, not being able to find any recompense sufficiently great
for this Herculean effort, he passed his arm round the painter's neck,
and embraced him. The surintendant, by this action, had utterly ruined a
suit 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 one for M. Percerin, who was walking behind Fouquet, and was
engaged in admiring, in Lebrun's painting, the suit that he had 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 perceived the advancing
procession of the king and the queens. His majesty was entering into
Melun with his long train of carriages and cavaliers.