"Monsieur!"
"I will not allow myself to remind your majesty that had M. d'Herblay wished to carry out his character of an assassin, he could very easily have assassinated your majesty this morning in the forest of Senart, and all would have been over."
The king started.
"A pistol bullet through the head," pursued Fouquet, "and the disfigured features of Louis XIV., which no one could have recognized, would be M. d'Herblay's complete and entire justification."
The king turned pale and giddy at the idea of the danger he had escaped.
"If M. d'Herblay," continued Fouquet, "had been an assassin, he had no occasion to inform me of his plan, in order to succeed. Freed from the real king, it would have been impossible to guess the false king. And if the usurper had been recognized by Anne of Austria, he would still have been a son for her. The usurper, as far as Monsieur d'Herblay's conscience was concerned, was still a king of the blood of Louis XIII. Moreover, the conspirator, in that course, would have had security, secrecy, and impunity. A pistol-bullet would have procured him all that. For the sake of Heaven, sire, grant me his forgiveness."
The king, instead of being touched by the picture he had drawn, so faithful in all its details, of Aramis' generosity, felt himself most painfully and cruelly humiliated by it. His unconquerable pride revolted at the idea that a man had held suspended at the end of his finger the thread of his royal life. Every word that fell from Fouquet's lips, and which he thought most efficacious in procuring his friend's pardon, seemed to pour another drop of poison into the already ulcerated heart of Louis XIV. Nothing could bend or soften him. Addressing himself to Fouquet, he said, "I really don't know, monsieur, why you should solicit the pardon of these men. What good is there in asking that which can be obtained without solicitation?"
"I do not understand you, sire."
"It is not difficult either. Where am I now?"
"In the Bastille, sire."