g."

"To Paris!" cried the duchesse to the coachman.

And the carriage returned toward the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, after the
conclusion of the treaty which gave up to death the last friend of
Fouquet, the last defender of Belle-Isle, the ancient friend of Marie
Michon, the new enemy of the duchesse.

CHAPTER CXI.

THE TWO LIGHTERS.

D'Artagnan had set off; Fouquet likewise was gone, and he with a
rapidity which doubled the tender interest of his friends. The first
moments of this journey, or better to say, of this flight, were troubled
by the incessant fear of all the horses and all the carriages which
could be perceived behind the fugitive. It was not natural, in fact, if
Louis XIV. was determined to seize this prey, that he should allow it to
escape; the young lion was already accustomed to the chase, and he had
bloodhounds sufficiently ardent to allow him to depend upon them. But
insensibly all the fears were dispersed; the surintendant, by hard
traveling, placed such a distance between himself and his persecutors,
that no one of them could reasonably be expected to overtake him. As to
his position, his friends had made it excellent for him. Was he not
traveling to join the king at Nantes, and what did the rapidity prove
but his zeal to obey? He arrived, fatigued but reassured, at Orleans,
where he found, thanks to the care of a courier who had preceded him, a
handsome lighter of eight oars. These lighters, in the shape of
gondolas, rather wide and rather heavy, containing a small covered
chamber in shape of a deck, and a chamber in the poop, formed by a tent,
then acted as passage-boats from Orleans to Nantes, by the Loire, and
this passage, a long one in our days, appeared then more easy and
convenient than the high road, with its post hacks, or its bad, scarcely
hung carriages. Fouquet went on board this lighter, which set out
immediately. The rowers, knowing they had the honor of conveying the
surintendant of the finances, pulled with all their strength, and that
magic word, the _finances_, promised them a liberal gratification, of
which they wished to prove themselves worthy. The lighter bounded over
the tiny waves of the Loire. Magnificent weather, one of those sun
risings that empurple landscapes, left the river all its limpid
serenity. The current and the rowers carried Fouquet along as wings
carry a bird, and he arrived before Beaugency without any accident
having signalized the voyage. Fouquet