Chapter 23

Chapter XXIII
The King’s Gratitude
The two men were on the point of darting towards each other, when they suddenly stopped, as a mutual recognition took place, and each uttered a cry of horror.

“Have you come to assassinate me, Monsieur?” said the King, when he recognized Fouquet.

“The King in this state!” murmured the minister.

Nothing could be more terrible, indeed, than the appearance of Louis at the moment Fouquet had surprised him; his clothes were in tatters; his shirt, open and torn to rags, was stained with sweat, and with the blood which streamed from his lacerated breast and arms. Haggard, pale, foaming, his hair dishevelled, Louis XIV presented a vivid picture of despair, hunger, and fear, combined in one figure. Fouquet was so touched, so affected and disturbed, that he ran to the King with his arms stretched out and his eyes filled with tears. Louis held up the massive piece of wood of which he had made such a furious use.

“Sire,” said Fouquet, in a voice trembling with emotion, “do you not recognize the most faithful of your friends?”

“A friend,- you!” repeated Louis, gnashing his teeth in a manner which betrayed his hate and desire for speedy vengeance.

“The most respectful of your servants,” added Fouquet, throwing himself on his knees. The King let the rude weapon fall from his grasp. Fouquet approached him, kissed his knees, and took him tenderly in his arms. “My King, my child,” he said, “how you must have suffered.”

Louis, recalled to himself by the change of situation, looked at himself, and ashamed of his disordered state, ashamed of his conduct, ashamed of the protection he was receiving, drew back. Fouquet did not understand this movement; he did not perceive that the King’s pride would never forgive him for having been a witness of so much weakness. “Come, Sire,” he said, “you are free.”

“Free?” repeated the King. “Oh! you set me at liberty, then, after having dared to lift up your hand against me?”

“You do not believe that!” exclaimed Fouquet, indignantly; “you cannot believe me to be guilty of such an act.”

And rapidly, warmly even, he related the whole particulars of the intrigue, the details of which are already known to the reader. While the recital continued, Louis suffered the most horrible anguish of mind; and when it was finished, the magnitude of the danger he had run struck him far more than the importance of the secret relating to his twin brother. “Monsieur,” he said suddenly to Fouquet, “this double birth is a falsehood; you cannot have been deceived by it.”

“Sire!”

“It is impossible, I tell you, that the honor,