impossible it should be the
king, Gourville, as the king was still in Paris yesterday."

Gourville replied to the surintendant by a look which said: "You were
there yourself yesterday."

"And by what do you make out they are in such haste?" added he, for the
sake of gaining time.

"By this, monsieur," said the patron; "these people must have set out a
long while after us, and they have already nearly overtaken us."

"Bah!" said Gourville, "who told you that they do not come from
Beaugency or from Moit, even?"

"We have seen no lighter of that shape, except at Orleans. It comes from
Orleans, monsieur, and makes great haste."

Fouquet and Gourville exchanged a glance. The patron remarked their
uneasiness, and to mislead him, Gourville immediately said:

"Some friend, who has laid a wager he would catch us; let us win the
wager, and not allow him to come up with us."

The patron opened his mouth to reply that that was impossible, when
Fouquet said with much _hauteur_:

"If it is any one who wishes to overtake us, let him come."

"We can try, monseigneur," said the patron, timidly. "Come, you fellows,
put out your strength, row, row!"

"No," said Fouquet, "stop short, on the contrary."

"Monseigneur! what folly!" interrupted Gourville, stooping toward his
ear.

"Quite short!" repeated Fouquet. The eight oars stopped, and resisting
the water, they created a retrograde motion in the lighter. It was
stopped. The twelve rowers in the other did not, at first, perceive this
maneuver, for they continued to urge on their boat so vigorously that it
arrived quickly within musket-shot. Fouquet was short-sighted, Gourville
was annoyed by the sun, which was full in his eyes: the patron alone,
with that habit and clearness which are acquired by a constant struggle
with the elements, perceived distinctly the travelers in the neighboring
lighter. "I can see them!" cried he, "there are two."

"I can see nothing," said Gourville. "You will not be long before you
distinguish them: in twenty strokes of their oars they will be within
twenty paces of us."

But what the patron announced was not realized; the lighter imitated the
movement commanded by Fouquet, and instead of coming to join its
pretended friends, it stopped short in the middle of the river.

"I cannot comprehend this," said the patron.

"Nor I, neither," said Gourville.

"You who can see so plainly the people in that lighter," resumed
Fouquet, "try to describ