t wish
your ruin. You will leave this house."

Aramis stifled the exclamation which almost escaped his broken heart.

"I am hospitable toward all who are dwellers beneath my roof," continued
Fouquet, with an air of inexpressible majesty; "you will not be more
fatally lost than he whose ruin you have consummated."

"You will be so," said Aramis, in a hoarse, prophetic voice, "you will
be so, believe me."

"I accept the augury, Monsieur d'Herblay; but nothing shall prevent me,
nothing shall stop me. You will leave Vaux--you must leave France; I
give you four hours to place yourself out of the king's reach."

"Four hours?" said Aramis, scornfully and incredulously.

"Upon the word of Fouquet, no one shall follow you before the expiration
of that time. You will therefore have four hours' advance of those whom
the king may wish to dispatch after you."

"Four hours!" repeated Aramis, in a thick smothered voice.

"It is more than you will need to get on board a vessel and flee to
Belle-Isle, which I give you as a place of refuge."

"Ah!" murmured Aramis.

"Belle-Isle is as much mine for you as Vaux is mine for the king. Go,
D'Herblay, go! as long as I live, not a hair of your head shall be
injured."

"Thank you," said Aramis, with a cold irony of manner.

"Go at once, then, and give me your hand, before we both hasten away;
you to save your life, I to save my honor."

Aramis withdrew from his breast the hand he had concealed there; it was
stained with his blood. He had dug his nails into his flesh, as if in
punishment for having nursed so many projects, more vain, insensate,
and fleeting than the life of man himself. Fouquet was horror-stricken,
and then his heart smote him with pity. He threw open his arms as if to
embrace him.

"I had no arms," murmured Aramis, as wild and terrible in his wrath as
the shade of Dido. And then, without touching Fouquet's hand, he turned
his head aside, and stepped back a pace or two. His last word was an
imprecation, his last gesture a curse, which his bloodstained hand
seemed to invoke, as it sprinkled on Fouquet's face a few drops of blood
which flowed from his breast. And both of them darted out of the room by
the secret staircase which led down to the inner courtyard. Fouquet
ordered his best horses, while Aramis paused at the foot of the
staircase which led to Porthos' apartment. He reflected profoundly and
for some time, while Fouquet's carriage left the stone-paved cour