Part 47 (1/2)
”What do you reatest stress at the beginning of our conversation?”
”Yes, hisof hate could resist the threat of such a revelation?”
”Such a revelation, do you say? that is the very point where your logic fails you What! do you suppose that if I had , I should have been alive now?”
”It is not ten ”
”That ht, but he would have had the tieon
Co, _mordieu!_”
And by the hly his old otten by one who never see, Fouquet could not but understand to what a pitch of exaltation the calht himself He shuddered
”And then,” replied the latter, after having s, ”should I be the man I really am, should I be the true friend you believealready hates so bitterly, to a feeling; to have addressed the wo both his crown and his honor, why, he would pluck out your heart with his own hands”
”You have not allowed him to penetrate your secret, then?”
”I would sooner, far sooner, have sed at one draught all the poisons that Mithridates drank in twenty years, in order to try and avoid death, than have betrayed ”
”What have you done, then?”
”Ah! noe are coneur I think I shall not fail to excite in you a little interest You are listening, I hope”
”How can you ask ? Go on”
Aramis walked softly all round the room, satisfied himself that they were alone, and that all was silent, and then returned and placed himself close to the ar with the deepest anxiety the revelation he had tohimself to Fouquet, who listened to hiot tothese twins, naly, so miraculously, like each other, that it would be utterly iuish the one frouish them”
”Is it possible?” exclaimed Fouquet
”The sae, the saree of intelligence? their knowledge of huneur Yes; for the prisoner of the Bastile is, most incontestably, superior in every way to his brother; and if, from his prison, this unhappy victim were to pass to the throne, France would not, from the earliest period of its history, perhaps, have had a enius and nobility of character”
Fouquet buried his face in his hands, as if he were overwhelht of this immense secret Aramis approached hi his work of teneur, between the twins, both sons of Louis XIII, namely, the last comer does not know M Colbert”
Fouquet raised his head immediately--his features were pale and distorted The bolt had hit its mark--not his heart, but his mind and comprehension
”I understand you,” he said to Ara like it”
”One of those atte of this conversation, alters the fate of eneur”
”In a word, you propose that I should agree to the substitution of the son of Louis XIII, who is now a prisoner in the Bastile, for the son of Louis XIII, who is at this moment asleep in the Chamber of Morpheus?”