“Ma foi! why, Bazin!”
“The fool!”
“I do not say he is a man of genius, it is true; but he told me so; and after him, I repeat it to you.”
“I have never seen M. Fouquet,” replied Aramis with a look as pure and calm as that of a virgin who has never told a lie.
“Well, but if you had seen him and known him, there is no harm in that,” replied D’Artagnan. “M. Fouquet is a very good sort of a man.”
“Humph!”
“A great politician.” Aramis made a gesture of indifference.
“An all-powerful minister.”
“I only hold to the king and the pope.”
“Dame! listen then,” said D’Artagnan, in the most natural tone imaginable. “I said that because everybody here swears by M. Fouquet. The plain is M. Fouquet’s; the salt-mines I am about to buy are M. Fouquet’s; the island in which Porthos studies topography is M. Fouquet’s; the galleys are M. Fouquet’s. I confess, then, that nothing would have surprised me in your enfeoffment, or rather in that of your diocese, to M. Fouquet. He is a different master from the king, that is all; but quite as powerful as Louis.”