es," replied Fouquet; "in order to know what day I shall submit my
invitation to the king."

"This very evening, monseigneur, this very evening."

"Agreed," said the superintendent. "Gentlemen, I should wish to issue
my invitations; but you know that wherever the king goes, the king is
in his own palace; it is by his majesty, therefore, that you must be
invited." A murmur of delight immediately arose. Fouquet bowed and left.

"Proud and dauntless man," thought Colbert, "you accept, and yet you
know it will cost you ten millions."

"You have ruined me," whispered Fouquet, in a low tone, to Aramis.

"I have saved you," replied the latter, whilst Fouquet ascended the
flight of steps and inquired whether the king was still visible.

Chapter XLVII. The Orderly Clerk.

The king, anxious to be again quite alone, in order to reflect well
upon what was passing in his heart, had withdrawn to his own apartments,
where M. de Saint-Aignan had, after his conversation with Madame, gone
to meet him. This conversation has already been related. The favorite,
vain of his twofold importance, and feeling that he had become, during
the last two hours, the confidant of the king, began to treat the
affairs of the court in a somewhat indifferent manner: and, from the
position in which he had placed himself, or rather, where chance had
placed him, he saw nothing but love and garlands of flowers around him.
The king's love for Madame, that of Madame for the king, that of Guiche
for Madame, that of La Valliere for the king, that of Malicorne for
Montalais, that of Mademoiselle de Tonnay-Charente for himself, was
not all this, truly, more than enough to turn the head of any courtier?
Besides, Saint-Aignan was the model of courtiers, past, present, and to
come; and, moreover, showed himself such an excellent narrator, and
so discerningly appreciative that the king listened to him with an
appearance of great interest, particularly when he described the excited
manner with which Madame had sought for him to converse about the affair
of Mademoiselle de la Valliere. While the king no longer experienced for
Madame any remains of the passion he had once felt for her, there was,
in this same eagerness of Madame to procure information about him, great
gratification for his vanity, from which he could not free himself. He
experienced this pleasure then, but nothing more, and his heart was not,
for a single moment, alarmed at what Madame might, or m