Man in the Iron Mask (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Alexandre Dumas

  Aramis thereupon turned towards him and said in a quiet tone, “You will not forget, my friend, the King’s order respect ing those whom he intends to receive this morning on rising.” These words were clear enough, and the musketeer understood them; he, therefore, bowed to Fouquet, and then to Aramis,—to the latter with a slight admixture of ironical respect, —and disappeared.

  No sooner had he left, than Fouquet, whose impatience had hardly been able to wait for that moment, darted towards the door to close it, and then returning to the Bishop, he said, “My dear d’Herblay, I think it now high time you should explain to me what has passed, for, in plain and honest truth, I do not understand anything.”

  “We will explain all that to you,” said Aramis, sitting down, and making Fouquet sit down also. “Where shall I begin?”

  “With this, first of all. Why does the King set me at liberty?”

  “You ought rather to ask me what was his reason for having you arrested.”

  “Since my arrest, I have had time to think over it, and my idea is that it arises out of some slight feeling of jealousy. My fête put M. Colbert out of temper, and M. Colbert discovered some cause of complaint against me; Belle-Isle, for instance.”

  “No; there is no question at all just now of Belle-Isle.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “Do you remember those receipts for thirteen millions which M. de Mazarin contrived to get stolen from you?”

  “Yes, of course!”

  “Well, you are already pronounced to be a public robber.”

  “Good heavens!”

  “Oh! that is not all. Do you also remember that letter you wrote to La Vallière?”

  “Alas, yes!”

  “And that proclaims you a traitor and suborner.”

  “Why should he have pardoned me, then?”

  “We have not yet arrived at that part of our argument. I wish you to be quite convinced of the fact itself. Observe this well: the King knows you to be guilty of an appropriation of public funds. Oh! of course I know that you have done nothing of the kind; but, at all events, the King has not seen the receipts, and he cannot do otherwise than believe you criminal.”

  “I beg your pardon, I do not see—”

  “You will see presently, though. The King, moreover, having read your love-letter to La Vallière, and the offers you there made her, cannot retain any doubt of your intentions with regard to that young lady; you will admit that, I suppose?”

  “Certainly. But, conclude.”

  “In a few words. The King is, therefore, a powerful, implacable, and eternal enemy for you.”

  “Agreed. But am I, then, so powerful that he has not dared to sacrifice me, notwithstanding his hatred, with all the means which my weakness, or my misfortunes, may have given him as a hold upon me.”

  “It is clear, beyond all doubt,” pursued Aramis, coldly, “that the King has quarrelled irreconcilably with you.”

  “But, since he absolves me—”

  “Do you believe it likely?” asked the Bishop, with a searching look.

  “Without believing in his sincerity of heart, I believe in the truth of the fact.”

  Aramis slightly shrugged his shoulders.

  “But why, then, should Louis XIV have commissioned you to tell me what you have just stated?”

  “The King charged me with nothing for you.”

  “With nothing!” said the Surintendant, stupefied. “But that order, then—”

  “Oh! yes. You are quite right. There is an order, certainly;” and these words were pronounced by Aramis in so strange a tone, that Fouquet could not resist starting.

  “You are concealing something from me, I see. What is it?”

  Aramis softly rubbed his white fingers over his chin, but said nothing.

  “Does the King exile me?”

  “Do not act as if you were playing at the game children play at when they have to try to guess where a thing has been hidden, and are informed by a bell being rung, when they are approaching near to it, or going away from it.”

  “Speak then.”

  “Guess.”

  “You alarm me.”

  “Bah! that is because you have not guessed, then.”

  “What did the King say to you? In the name of our friendship, do not deceive me.”

  “The King has not said a word to me.”

  “You are killing me with impatience, d’Herblay. Am I still Surintendant?”

  “As long as you like.”

  “But what extraordinary empire have you so suddenly acquired over His Majesty’s mind?”

  “Ah! that is it.”

  “You make him do as you like.”

  “I believe so.”

  “It is hardly credible.”

  “So any one would say.”

  “D’Herblay, by our alliance, by our friendship, by everything you hold dearest in the world, speak openly, I implore you. By what means have you succeeded in overcoming Louis XIV’s prejudices, for he did not like you, I know.”

  “The King will like me now,” said Aramis, laying a stress upon the last word.

  “You have something particular then, between you?”

  “Yes.”

  “A secret, perhaps?”

  “Yes, a secret.”

  “A secret of such a nature as to change his Majesty’s interests ?”

  “You are, indeed, a man of superior intelligence, monseigneur, and have made a very accurate guess. I have, in fact, discovered a secret, of a nature to change the interests of the King of France.”

  “Ah!” said Fouquet, with the reserve of a man who does not wish to ask any questions.

  “And you shall judge of it yourself,” pursued Aramis; “and you shall tell me if I am mistaken with regard to the importance of this secret.”

  “I am listening, since you are good enough to unbosom yourself to me; only do not forget that I have asked you nothing which may be indiscreet in you to communicate.”

  Aramis seemed, for a moment, as if he were collecting himself.

  “Do not speak!” said Fouquet; “there is still time enough.”

  “Do you remember,” said the Bishop, casting down his eyes, “the birth of Louis XIV?”

  “As it were yesterday.”

  “Have you heard anything particular respecting his birth?”

  “Nothing; except that the King was not really the son of Louis XIII.”

  “That does not matter to us, or the kingdom either; he is the son of his father, says the French law, whose father is recognised by the law.”

  “True; but it is a grave matter, when the quality of races is called into question.”

  “A merely secondary question, after all. So that, in fact, you have never learned or heard anything in particular?”

  “Nothing.”

  “That is where my secret begins. The Queen, you must know, instead of being delivered of one son, was delivered of two children.”

  Fouquet looked up suddenly, as he replied, “And the second is dead?”

  “You will see. These twins seemed likely to be regarded as the pride of their mother, and the hope of France; but the weak nature of the King, his superstitious feelings, made him apprehend a series of conflicts between two children whose rights were equal; and so he put out of the way—he suppressed—one of the twins.”

  “Suppressed, do you say?”

  “Be patient. Both the children grew up: the one on the throne, whose minister you are; the other, who is my friend, in gloom and isolation.”

  “Good Heavens! What are you saying, Monsieur d’Herblay? And what is this poor Prince doing?”

  “Ask me rather, what he has done.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “He was brought up in the country, and then thrown into a fortress which goes by the name of the Bastille.”

  “Is it possible?” cried the Surintendant, clasping his hands.

  “The one was the most fortunate of men; the other the most unhappy and most
miserable of all living beings.”

  “Does his mother not know this?”

  “Anne of Austria knows it all.”

  “And the King?”

  “Knows absolutely nothing.”

  “So much the better!” said Fouquet.

  This remark seemed to make a great impression on Aramis; he looked at Fouquet with the most anxious expression of countenance.

  “I beg your pardon; I interrupted you,” said Fouquet.

  “I was saying,” resumed Aramis, “that this poor Prince was the unhappiest of human beings, when Heaven, whose thoughts are over all His creatures, undertook to come to his assistance.”

  “Oh! in what way? Tell me?”

  “You will see. The reigning King—I say the reigning King—you can guess very well why?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Because both of them, being legitimately entitled from their birth, ought both to have been kings. Is not that your opinion?”

  “It is, certainly.”

  “Unreservedly so?”

  “Most unreservedly; twins are one person in two bodies.”

  “I am pleased that a legist of your learning and authority should have pronounced such an opinion. It is agreed, then, that both of them possessed the same rights, is it not?”

  “Incontestably so! but, gracious Heaven, what an extraordinary circumstance.”

  “We are not at the end of it yet. Patience.”

  “Oh! I shall find ‘patience’ enough.”

  “Heaven wished to raise up for that oppressed child an avenger, or a supporter, or vindicator, if you prefer it. It happened that the reigning King, the usurper—(you are quite of my opinion, I believe, that it is an act of usurpation quietly to enjoy, and selfishly to assume the right over, an inheritance to which a man has only the right of one half?)—”

  “Yes, usurpation is the word.”

  “In that case, I continue. It was Heaven’s will that the usurper should possess, in the person of his first minister, a man of great talent, of large and generous nature.”

  “Well, well,” said Fouquet, “I understand; you have relied upon me to repair the wrong which has been done to this unhappy brother of Louis XIV. You have thought well; I will help you. I thank you, d’Herblay, I thank you.”

  “Oh, no, it is not that at all; you have not allowed me to finish,” said Aramis, perfectly unmoved.

  “I will not say another word, then.”

  “M. Fouquet, I was observing, the minister of the reigning sovereign was suddenly taken into the greatest aversion, and menaced with the ruin of his fortune, with loss of liberty, with loss of life even, by intrigue and personal hatred, to which the King gave too readily an attentive ear. But Heaven permits (still, however, out of consideration for the unhappy Prince who had been sacrificed) that M. Fouquet should in his turn have a devoted friend who knew this state secret, and felt that he possessed strength and courage enough to divulge this secret, after having had the strength to carry it locked up in his own heart for twenty years.”

  “Do not go on any farther,” said Fouquet, full of generous feelings. “I understand you, and can guess everything now. You went to see the King when the intelligence of my arrest reached you; you implored him, he refused to listen to you; then you threatened him with that secret, threatened to reveal it, and Louis XIV, alarmed at the risk of its betrayal, granted to the terror of your indiscretion what he refused to your generous intercession. I understand, I understand; you have the King in your power; I understand.”

  “You understand nothing as yet,” replied Aramis, “and again you have interrupted me. And then, too, allow me to observe that you pay no attention to logical reasoning, and seem to forget what you ought most to remember.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know upon what I laid the greatest stress at the beginning of our conversation?”

  “Yes; His Majesty’s hate, invincible hate for me—yes; but what feeling of hate could resist the threat of such a revelation?”

  “Such a revelation, do you say? that is the very point where your logic fails you. What! do you suppose that if I had made such a revelation to the King, I should have been alive now?”

  “It is not ten minutes ago since you were with the King.”

  “That may be. He might not have had the time to get me killed outright, but he would have had the time to get me gagged and thrown into a dungeon. Come, come, show a little consistency in your reasoning, mordieu!”

  And by the mere use of this word, which was so thoroughly his old musketeer’s expression, forgotten by one who never seemed to forget anything, Fouquet could not but understand to what a pitch of exaltation the calm, impenetrable Bishop of Vannes had wrought himself. He shuddered at it.

  “And then,” replied the latter, after having mastered his feelings, “should I be the man I really am, should I be the true friend you regard me as, if I were to expose you, you whom the King hates already bitterly enough, to a feeling still more than ever to be dreaded in that young man? To have robbed him is nothing; to have addressed the woman he loves is not much; but to hold in your keeping both his crown and his honour, why, he would rather pluck out your heart with his own hands.”

  “You have not allowed him to penetrate your secret, then?”

  “I would sooner, far sooner, have swallowed at one draught all the poisons that Mithridates drank in twenty years, in order to try to avoid death, than have betrayed my secret to the King.”

  “What have you done, then?”

  “Ah! now we are coming to the point, monseigneur. I think I shall not fail to excite a little interest in you. You are listening, I hope?”

  “How can you ask me if I am listening? Go on.”

  Aramis walked softly all round the room, satisfied himself that they were alone, and that all was silent, and then returned and placed himself close to the arm-chair in which Fouquet was seated, awaiting with the deepest anxiety the revelations he had to make.

  “I forgot to tell you,” resumed Aramis, addressing himself to Fouquet, who listened to him with the most absorbed attention—“I forgot to mention a most remarkable circumstance respecting these twins, namely, that God had formed them so startingly, so miraculously, like each other, that it would be utterly impossible to distinguish the one from the other. Their own mother would not be able to distinguish them.”

  “Is it possible?” exclaimed Fouquet.

  “The same noble character in their features, the same carriage, the same stature, the same voice.”

  “But their thoughts? degree of intelligence? their knowledge of human life?”

  “There is inequality there, I admit, monseigneur. Yes; for the prisoner of the Bastille is, most incontestably, superior in every way to his brother; and if, from his prison, this unhappy victim were to pass to the throne, France would not, from the earliest period of its history, perhaps, have had a master more powerful by his genius and true nobleness of character.”

  Fouquet buried his face in his hands, as if he were overwhelmed by the weight of this immense secret. Aramis approached him.

  “There is a further inequality,” he said, continuing his work of temptation, “an inequality which concerns yourself, monseigneur, between the twins, both sons of Louis XIII, namely, the last comer does not know M. Colbert.”

  Fouquet raised his head immediately; his features were pale and distorted. The bolt had hit its mark—not his heart, but his mind and comprehension.

  “I understand you,” he said to Aramis; “you are proposing a conspiracy to me?”

  “Something like it.”

  “One of these attempts, which, as you said at the beginning of this conversation, alters the fate of empires?”

  “And of the Surintendant too—yes, monseigneur.”

  “In a word, you propose that I should agree to the substitution of the son of Louis XIII, who is now a prisoner in the Bastille, for the son of Louis XIII, who is now at this moment asleep in the Chamber of
Morpheus?”

  Aramis smiled with the sinister expression of the sinister thought which was passing through his brain, “Exactly,” he said.

  “Have you thought,” continued Fouquet, becoming animated with that strength of talent which in a few seconds originates and matures the conception of a plan, and with that largeness of view which forsees all its consequences, and embraces all its results at a glance—“have you thought that we must assemble the nobility, the clergy, and the third estate of the realm; that we shall have to depose the reigning sovereign, to disturb by so frightful a scandal the tomb of their dead father, to sacrifice the life, the honour of a woman, Anne of Austria, the life and peace of mind of another woman, Maria Theresa; and suppose that all were done, if we succeed in doing it—”

  “I do not understand you,” continued Aramis slowly. “There is not a single word of the slightest use in what you have just said.”

  “What!” said the Surintendant, surprised; “a man like you refuse to view the practical bearings of the case! Do you confine yourself to the childish delight of a political illusion, and neglect the chances of its being carried into execution; in other words, the reality itself. Is it possible?”

  “My friend,” said Aramis, emphasising the word with a kind of disdainful familiarity, “what does Heaven do in order to substitute one king for another?”

  “Heaven!” exclaimed Fouquet,—“Heaven gives directions to its agent, who seizes upon the doomed victim, hurries him away, and seats the triumphant rival on the empty throne. But you forget that this agent is called death. Oh! Monsieur d’Herblay, in Heaven’s name, tell me if you have had the idea—”

  “There is no question of that, monseigneur; you are going beyond the object in view. Who spoke of Louis XIV’s death? who spoke of adopting the example which Heaven sets in following out the strict execution of its decrees? No; I wish you to understand that Heaven effects its purposes without confusion or disturbance, without exciting comment or remark, without difficulty or exertion; and that men inspired by Heaven succeed like Heaven itself in all their undertakings, in all they attempt, in all they do.”