"Are you not very much fatigued with the long journey you have had, Monsieur le Capitaine?" 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 The captain of the harriers had prudently withdrawn.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 cannot imagine that they had sworn his death, and that to save his life from the claws of the parliament was to have 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, and with a view of cutting short the conversation.
"Yes," said the captain of the harriers, drawing toward them, "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 launched 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."