Chapter 19

Chapter XIX
The Shadow of Fouquet
D’Artagnan, still confused and oppressed by the conversation he had just had with the King, asked himself if he were really in possession of his senses; if the scene had occurred at Vaux; if he, d’Artagnan, were really the captain of the Musketeers and Fouquet the owner of the château in which Louis XIV was at that moment partaking of his hospitality. These reflections were not those of a drunken man, although everything was in prodigal profusion at Vaux, and the superintendent’s wines had met with a distinguished reception at the fête.

The Gascon, however, was a man of calm self-possession; and when he touched his steel blade he was able to assume, figuratively, the coolness of that steel for his great occasions. “Well,” he said, as he quitted the royal apartment, “I seem now to be mixed up historically with the destinies of the King and of the minister; it will be written that M. d’Artagnan, a younger son of a Gascon family, placed his hand on the shoulder of M. Nicholas Fouquet, the superintendent of the finances of France. My descendants, if I have any, will flatter themselves with the distinction which this arrest will confer, just as the members of the De Luynes family have done with regard to the estates of the poor Marechal d’Ancre. But now the thing to be done is to execute the King’s directions in a proper manner. Any man would know how to say to M. Fouquet, ‘Your sword, monsieur!’ But it is not every one who would be able to take care of M. Fouquet without others knowing anything about it. How am I to manage, then, so that Monsieur the Superintendent may pass from the height of favor to the direst disgrace; so that he may exchange Vaux for a dungeon; so that after having been steeped to his lips, as it were, in all the perfumes and incense of Ahasuerus, he may be transferred to the gallows of Haman,- in other words, of Enguerrand de Marigny?” And at this reflection d’Artagnan’s brow became clouded with perplexity. The musketeer had scruples. To deliver thus to death (for not a doubt existed that Louis hated Fouquet mortally) the man who had just shown himself so delightful and charming a host in every way, was a real case of conscience. “It seems to me,” said d’Artagnan to himself, “that if I am not a wretch, I shall let M. Fouquet know the purpose of the King in regard to him. Yet if I betray my master’s secret, I shall be a false-hearted knave and a traitor,- a crime provided for and punishable by military laws, as proved by the fact that twenty times in the wars I have seen miserable fellows strung up for doing in little degree what my scruples counsel me to do on a larger scale. No, I think that a man of intelligence ought to get out of this difficulty with more skill than that. And now shall we admit that I have intelligence? It is