ight, pressing each other's hands--

"Humph!" said D'Artagnan, "the old duchesse is not more difficult in her
friendships than she was formerly. She paying her court to the mistress
of M. Colbert! Poor M. Fouquet! that presages you nothing good!"

He rode on. M. Colbert got into his carriage, and this noble trio
commenced a sufficiently slow pilgrimage toward the wood of Vincennes.
Madame de Chevreuse set down Madame Vanel at her husband's house, and,
left alone with M. Colbert, she chatted upon affairs, while continuing
her ride. She had an inexhaustible fund of conversation, had that dear
duchesse, and as she always talked for the ill of others, always with a
view to her own good, her conversation amused her interlocutor, and did
not fail to leave a favorable impression behind.

She taught Colbert, who, poor man! was ignorant of it, how great a
minister he was, and how Fouquet would soon become nothing. She promised
to rally around him, when he should become surintendant, all the old
nobility of the kingdom, and questioned him as to the preponderance it
would be proper to allow La Valliere to take. She praised him, she
blamed him, she bewildered him. She showed him the secret of so many
secrets, that, for a moment, Colbert feared he must have to do with the
devil. She proved to him that she held in her hand the Colbert of
to-day, as she had held the Fouquet of yesterday; and as he asked her
very simply the reason of her hatred for the surintendant: "Why do you
yourself hate him?" said she.

"Madame, in politics," replied he, "the differences of system may bring
about divisions between men. M. Fouquet always appeared to me to
practice a system opposed to the true interests of the king."

She interrupted him.--"I will say no more to you about M. Fouquet. The
journey the king is about to take to Nantes will give a good account of
him. M. Fouquet, for me, is a man quite gone by--and for you also."

Colbert made no reply. "On his return from Nantes," continued the
duchesse, "the king, who is only anxious for a pretext, will find that
the States have not behaved well--that they have made too few
sacrifices. The States will say that the imposts are too heavy, and that
the surintendant has ruined them. The king will lay all the blame on M.
Fouquet, and then--"

"And then?" said Colbert.

"Oh! he will be disgraced. Is not that your opinion?"

Colbert darted a glance at the duchesse, which plainly said: "If M.
Fouquet