Epilogue - Page 2

“Are you not very fatigued with the long journey you have had, Monsieur the Captain?” continued the falconer. “It must be full two hundred leagues from hence to Pignerol.”

“Two hundred and sixty to go, and as many to come back,” said d’Artagnan, quietly.

“And,” said the falconer, “is he well?”

“Who?” asked d’Artagnan.

“Why, poor M. Fouquet,” continued the falconer, still in a low voice. The captain of the harriers had prudently withdrawn.

“No,” replied d’Artagnan, “the poor man frets terribly; he cannot comprehend how imprisonment can be a favor. He says that the parliament had absolved him by banishing him, and that banishment is liberty. He does not imagine that they have sworn his death, and that to save his life from the claws of the parliament would be to incur too much obligation to God.”

“Ah, yes; the poor man had a near chance of the scaffold,” replied the falconer; “it is said that M. Colbert had given orders to the governor of the Bastille, and that the execution was ordered.”

“Enough!” said d’Artagnan, pensively, as if to cut short the conversation.

“Yes,” said the captain of the harriers, approaching, “M. Fouquet is now at Pignerol; he has richly deserved it. He has had the good fortune to be conducted there by you; he had robbed the King enough.”

D’Artagnan cast at the master of the dogs one of his evil looks, and said to him, “Monsieur, if any one told me that you had eaten your dogs’ meat, not only would I refuse to believe it, but, still more, if you were condemned to the whip or the jail for it, I should pity you, and would not allow people to speak ill of you. And yet, Monsieur, honest man as you may be, I assure you that you are not more so than poor M. Fouquet was.”

After having undergone this sharp rebuke, the captain of the harriers hung his head, and allowed the falconer to get two steps in advance of him nearer to d’Artagnan.

“He is content,” said the falconer, in a low voice, to the musketeer; “we all know that harriers are in fashion nowadays. If he were a falconer he would not talk in that way.”

D’Artagnan smiled in a melancholy manner at seeing this great political question resolved by the discontent of such humble interests. He for a moment ran over in his mind the glorious existence of the superintendent, the crumbling away of his fortunes, and the melancholy death that awaited him; and to conclude, “Did M. Fouquet love falconry?” said he.

“Oh, passionately, Monsieur!” replied the falconer, with an accent of bitter regret and a sigh that was the funeral oration of