"To Paris!" cried the duchesse to the coachman.
And the carriage returned toward the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, after the conclusion of the treaty which gave up to death the last friend of Fouquet, the last defender of Belle-Isle, the ancient friend of Marie Michon, the new enemy of the duchesse.
CHAPTER CXI.
THE TWO LIGHTERS.
D'Artagnan had set off; Fouquet likewise was gone, and he with a rapidity which doubled the tender interest of his friends. The first moments of this journey, or better to say, of this flight, were troubled by the incessant fear of all the horses and all the carriages which could be perceived behind the fugitive. It was not natural, in fact, if Louis XIV. was determined to seize this prey, that he should allow it to escape; the young lion was already accustomed to the chase, and he had bloodhounds sufficiently ardent to allow him to depend upon them. But insensibly all the fears were dispersed; the surintendant, by hard traveling, placed such a distance between himself and his persecutors, that no one of them could reasonably be expected to overtake him. As to his position, his friends had made it excellent for him. Was he not traveling to join the king at Nantes, and what did the rapidity prove but his zeal to obey? He arrived, fatigued but reassured, at Orleans, where he found, thanks to the care of a courier who had preceded him, a handsome lighter of eight oars. These lighters, in the shape of gondolas, rather wide and rather heavy, containing a small covered chamber in shape of a deck, and a chamber in the poop, formed by a tent, then acted as passage-boats from Orleans to Nantes, by the Loire, and this passage, a long one in our days, appeared then more easy and convenient than the high road, with its post hacks, or its bad, scarcely hung carriages. Fouquet went on board this lighter, which set out immediately. The rowers, knowing they had the honor of conveying the surintendant of the finances, pulled with all their strength, and that magic word, the finances, promised them a liberal gratification, of which they wished to prove themselves worthy. The lighter bounded over the tiny waves of the Loire. Magnificent weather, one of those sun risings that empurple landscapes, left the river all its limpid serenity. The current and the rowers carried Fouquet along as wings carry a bird, and he arrived before Beaugency without any accident having signalized the voyage. Fouquet hoped to be the first to arrive at Nantes; there he would see the notables and gain support among the principal members of the States; he would make himself necessary, a thing very easy for a man of his merit, and would delay the catastrophe, if he did not succeed in avoiding it entirely. "Besides," said Gourville to him, "at Nantes, you will make out, or we will make out, the intentions of your enemies; we will have horses always ready to convey you to the inextricable Poitou, a bark in which to gain the sea, and when once in the open sea, Belle-Isle is the inviolable port. You see, besides, that no one is watching you, no one is following you." He had scarcely finished when they discovered at a distance, behind an elbow formed by the river, the masts of a large lighter, which was coming down. The rowers of Fouquet's boat uttered a cry of surprise on seeing this galley.
"What is the matter?" asked Fouquet.
"The matter is, monseigneur," replied the patron of the bark, "that it is a truly remarkable thing—that lighter comes along like a hurricane."
Gourville started, and mounted on the deck, in order to see the better.
Fouquet did not go up with him, but he said to Gourville with a restrained mistrust: "See what it is, dear friend."