e door. "What do you
want now?" cried Baisemeaux. "Can you not leave me in peace for ten
minutes?"

"Monsieur," said the sergeant, "the sick man, No. 12, has commissioned
the turnkey to request you to send him a confessor."

Baisemeaux very nearly sank on the floor; but Aramis disdained to
reassure him, just as he had disdained to terrify him. "What must I
answer?" inquired Baisemeaux.

"Just what you please," replied Aramis, compressing his lips; "that is
your business. _I_ am not the governor of the Bastile."

"Tell the prisoner," cried Baisemeaux, quickly,--"tell the prisoner that
his request is granted." The sergeant left the room. "Oh! monseigneur,
monseigneur," murmured Baisemeaux, "how could I have suspected!--how
could I have foreseen this!"

"Who requested you to suspect, and who besought you to foresee?"
contemptuously answered Aramis. "The order suspects; the order knows;
the order foresees--is that not enough?"

"What is it you command?" added Baisemeaux.

"I?--nothing at all. I am nothing but a poor priest, a simple confessor.
Have I your orders to go and see the sufferer?"

"Oh, monseigneur, I do not order; I pray you to go."

"'Tis well; conduct me to him."

End of Louise de la Valliere. The last text in the series is The Man in
the Iron Mask.

Footnotes:

[Footnote 1: "To err is human."]

[Footnote 2: Potatoes were not grown in France at that time. La Siecle insists
that the error is theirs, and that Dumas meant "tomatoes."]

[Footnote 3: In the five-volume edition, Volume 3 ends here.]

[Footnote 4: "In your house."]

[Footnote 5: This alternate translation of the verse in this chapter:

"Oh! you who sadly are wandering alone,
Come, come, and laugh with us."

---is closer to the original meaning.]

[Footnote 6: Marie de Mancini was a former love of the king's. He had to abandon
her for the political advantages which the marriage to the Spanish
Infanta, Maria Theresa, afforded. See The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Chapter
XIII.]

[Footnote 7: "[A sun] not eclipsed by many suns." Louis's device was the sun.]

[Footnote 8: In the three-volume edition, Volume 2, entitled Louise de la
Valliere, ends here.]

[Footnote 9: "To what heights may he not aspire?" Fouquet's motto.]

[Footnote 10: "A creature rare on earth."]

[Footnote 11: "With an eye always to the climax."]

End of Project Gutenberg's Louise de la Valliere, by Alexandre Dumas, Pere

*** END O