rd you?"

"You can hardly suppose, monseigneur, that having already exceeded my
orders, which forbade me leaving you a single moment--you can hardly
suppose, I say, that I should have been mad enough to rouse the whole
house and allow myself to be seen in the corridor of the bishop of
Vannes, in order that M. Colbert might state with positive certainty
that I gave you time to burn your papers."

"My papers?"

"Of course; at least that is what I should have done in your place; when
any one opens a door for me, I always availed myself of it."

"Yes, yes, and I thank you, for I have availed myself of it."

"And you have done perfectly right. Every man has his own peculiar
secrets, with which others have nothing to do. But let us return to
Aramis, monseigneur."

"Well, then, I tell you, you could not have called loud enough, or
Aramis would have heard you."

"However softly any one may call Aramis, monseigneur, Aramis always
hears when he has an interest in hearing. I repeat what I said
before--Aramis was not in his own room, or Aramis had certain reasons
for not recognizing my voice, of which I am ignorant, and of which you
even may be ignorant yourself, notwithstanding your liege-man is his
greatness the lord bishop of Vannes."

Fouquet drew a deep sigh, rose from his seat, made three or four turns
in his room, and finished by seating himself, with an expression of
extreme dejection, upon his magnificent bed with velvet hangings and
trimmed with the costliest lace. D'Artagnan looked at Fouquet with
feelings of the deepest and sincerest pity.

"I have seen a good many men arrested in my life," said the musketeer,
sadly; "I have seen both M. de Cinq-Mars and M. de Chalais arrested,
though I was very young then. I have seen M. de Conde arrested with the
princes; I have seen M. de Retz arrested; I have seen M. Broussel
arrested. Stay a moment, monseigneur, it is disagreeable to have to say,
but the very one of all those whom you most resemble at this moment was
that poor fellow Broussel. You were very near doing as he did, putting
your dinner napkin in your portfolio, and wiping your mouth with your
papers. Mordioux! Monseigneur Fouquet, a man like you ought not to be
dejected in this manner. Suppose your friends saw you."

"Monsieur d'Artagnan," returned the surintendant, with a smile full of
gentleness, "you do not understand me; it is precisely because my
friends do not see me that I am such as you see me now.