"Ah! is that you, comte?" he exclaimed, as soon as he perceived him, doubly delighted, not only to see him again, but also to get rid of Colbert, whose scowling face always put him out of humor. "So much the better. I am very glad to see you; you will make one of the traveling party, I suppose?"
"Of what traveling party are you speaking, sire?" inquired Saint-Aignan.
"The one we are making up to go to the fete the surintendant is about to give at Vaux. Ah! Saint-Aignan, you will, at last, see a fete, a royal fete, by the side of which all our amusements at Fontainebleau are petty, contemptible affairs."
"At Vaux! the surintendant going to give a fete in your majesty's honor? Nothing more than that!"
"'Nothing more that that,' do you say! It is very diverting to find you treating it with so much disdain. Are you, who express such an indifference on the subject, aware, that as soon as it is known that M. Fouquet is going to receive me at Vaux next Sunday week, people will be striving their very utmost to get invited to the fete. I repeat, Saint-Aignan, you shall be one of the invited guests."
"Very well, sire; unless I shall, in the meantime, have undertaken a longer and less agreeable journey."
"What journey do you allude to?"
"The one across the Styx, sire."
"Bah!" said Louis XIV., laughing.
"No, seriously, sire," replied Saint-Aignan, "I am invited there; and in such a way, in truth, that I hardly know what to say, or how to act, in order to refuse it."