"Do you feel your attack coming on?" asked Madame Fouquet.
"Neither, thank you both," said Fouquet.
"Your attack?" said D'Artagnan, in his turn; "are you unwell, monseigneur?"
"I have a tertian fever, which seized me after the fete at Vaux."
"Caught cold in the grottoes, at night, perhaps?"
"No, no; nothing but agitation, that was all."
"The too much heart you displayed in your reception of the king," said La Fontaine, quietly, without suspicion that he was uttering a sacrilege.
"We cannot devote too much heart to the reception of our king," said Fouquet, mildly, to his poet.
"Monsieur meant to say the too great ardor," interrupted D'Artagnan, with perfect frankness and much amenity. "The fact is, monseigneur, that hospitality was never practiced as at Vaux."
Madame Fouquet permitted her countenance to show clearly that if Fouquet had conducted himself well toward the king, the king had not rendered the like to the minister. But D'Artagnan knew the terrible secret. He alone with Fouquet knew it; those two men had not, the one the courage to complain, the other the right to accuse. The captain, to whom the two hundred pistols were brought, was about to take leave, when Fouquet, rising, took a glass of wine, and ordered one to be given to D'Artagnan.