you know I am not rich."

"No, no; but the order is--and if you had been the general--"

"You know I am not the general, I think."

"In that case, you have a friend who must be very wealthy--M. Fouquet."

"M. Fouquet! He is more than half ruined, madame."

"So it is said, but I did not believe it."

"Why, duchesse?"

"Because I have, or rather Laicques has, certain letters in his
possession from Cardinal Mazarin, which establish the existence of very
strange accounts."

"What accounts?"

"Relative to various sums of money borrowed and disposed of. I cannot
very distinctly remember what they are; but they establish the fact
that the superintendent, according to these letters, which are signed by
Mazarin, had taken thirteen millions of francs from the coffers of the
state. The case is a very serious one."

Aramis clenched his hands in anxiety and apprehension. "Is it possible,"
he said, "that you have such letters as you speak of, and have not
communicated them to M. Fouquet?"

"Ah!" replied the duchesse, "I keep such trifling matters as these in
reserve. The day may come when they will be of service; and they can be
withdrawn from the safe custody in which they now remain."

"And that day has arrived?" said Aramis.

"Yes."

"And you are going to show those letters to M. Fouquet?"

"I prefer to talk about them with you, instead."

"You must be in sad want of money, my poor friend, to think of such
things as these--you, too, who held M. de Mazarin's prose effusions in
such indifferent esteem."

"The fact is, I am in want of money."

"And then," continued Aramis, in cold accents, "it must have been very
distressing to you to be obliged to have recourse to such a means. It is
cruel."

"Oh! if had wished to do harm instead of good," said Madame de
Chevreuse, "instead of asking the general of the order, or M. Fouquet,
for the five hundred thousand francs I require, I--"

"_Five hundred thousand francs!_"

"Yes; no more. Do you think it much? I require at least as much as that
to restore Dampierre."

"Yes, madame."

"I say, therefore, that instead of asking for this amount, I should
have gone to see my old friend the queen-mother; the letters from her
husband, Signor Mazarini, would have served me as an introduction, and
I should have begged this mere trifle of her, saying to her, 'I wish,
madame, to have the honor of receiving you at Dampierre. Permit me to
put Dampierre in a fit state for that p