o be sought for?"

"Eh! monsieur! do you not know to what place I have sent him?" replied
Louis, acrimoniously.

"Your majesty has not told me."

"Monsieur, there are things that are to be guessed; and you, above all
others, do guess them."

"I might have been able to imagine, sire; but I do not presume to be
positive."

Colbert had not finished these words when a much rougher voice than that
of the king interrupted the interesting conversation thus begun between
the monarch and his clerk.

"D'Artagnan!" cried the king, with evident joy.

D'Artagnan, pale and in evidently bad humor, cried to the king, as he
entered, "Sire, is it your majesty who has given orders to my
musketeers?"

"What orders?" said the king.

"About M. Fouquet's house?"

"None!" replied Louis.

"Ah! ah!" said D'Artagnan, biting his mustache; "I was not mistaken,
then; it was monsieur here!" and he pointed to Colbert.

"What orders? Let me know," said the king.

"Orders to turn a house inside out, to beat M. Fouquet's servants, to
force the drawers, to give over a peaceful house to pillage! Mordioux!
these are savage orders!"

"Monsieur!" said Colbert, becoming pale.

"Monsieur," interrupted D'Artagnan, "the king alone, understand--the
king alone has a right to command my musketeers; but, as to you, I
forbid you to do it, and I tell you so before his majesty; gentlemen who
wear swords are not fellows with pens behind their ears."

"D'Artagnan! D'Artagnan!" murmured the king.

"It is humiliating," continued the musketeer; "my soldiers are
disgraced. I do not command _reitres_, thank you, nor clerks of the
intendance, mordioux!"

"Well! but what is all this about?" said the king, with authority.

"About this, sire; monsieur--monsieur, who could not guess your
majesty's orders, and consequently could not know I was gone to arrest
M. Fouquet; monsieur, who has caused the iron cage to be constructed for
his patron of yesterday--has sent M. de Roncherat to the lodgings of M.
Fouquet, and under pretense of taking away the surintendant's papers,
they have taken away the furniture. My musketeers have been placed round
the house all the morning; such were my orders. Why did any one presume
to order them to enter? Why, by forcing them to assist in this pillage,
have they been made accomplices in it? Mordioux! we serve the king, we
do, but we do not serve M. Colbert!"

"Monsieur d'Artagnan," said the king, sternly, "take care; it is not