“Good morning, dear D’Artagnan,” replied the prelate, coldly.
“You here!” stammered out the musketeer.
“His majesty desires you to report that he is still sleeping, after having been greatly fatigued during the whole night.”
“Ah!” said D’Artagnan, who could not understand how the bishop of Vannes, who had been so indifferent a favorite the previous evening, had become in half a dozen hours the most magnificent mushroom of fortune that had ever sprung up in a sovereign’s bedroom. In fact, to transmit the orders of the king even to the mere threshold of that monarch’s room, to serve as an intermediary of Louis XIV. so as to be able to give a single order in his name at a couple paces from him, he must have become more than Richelieu had ever been to Louis XIII. D’Artagnan’s expressive eye, half-opened lips, his curling mustache, said as much indeed in the plainest language to the chief favorite, who remained calm and perfectly unmoved.
“Moreover,” continued the bishop, “you will be good enough, monsieur le capitaine des mousquetaires, to allow those only to pass into the king’s room this morning who have special permission. His majesty does not wish to be disturbed just yet.”
“But,” objected D’Artagnan, almost on the point of refusing to obey this order, and particularly of giving unrestrained passage to the suspicions which the king’s silence had aroused—“but, monsieur l’eveque, his majesty gave me a rendezvous for this morning.”
“Later, later,” said the king’s voice, from the bottom of the alcove; a voice which made a cold shudder pass through the musketeer’s veins. He bowed, amazed, confused, and stupefied by the smile with which Aramis seemed to overwhelm him, as soon as these words had been pronounced.
“And then,” continued the bishop, “as an answer to what you were coming to ask the king, my dear D’Artagnan, here is an order of his majesty, which you will be good enough to attend to forthwith, for it concerns M. Fouquet.”
D’Artagnan took the order which was held out to him. “To be set at liberty!” he murmured. “Ah!” and he uttered a second “ah!” still more full of intelligence than the former; for this order explained Aramis’s presence with the king, and that Aramis, in order to have obtained Fouquet’s pardon, must have made considerable progress in the royal favor, and that this favor explained, in its tenor, the hardly conceivable assurance with which M. d’Herblay issued the order in the king’s name. For D’Artagnan it was quite sufficient to have understood something of the matter in hand to order to understand the rest. He bowed and withdrew a couple of paces, as though he were about to leave.
“I am going with you,” said the bishop.