"So it is said, but I would 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 surintendant, according to these letters, which are signed by Mazarin, had taken thirty 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 little matters as these in reserve. The day may come when they may be of service; and they can then be withdrawn from the safe custody in which they now are." "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 I 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--" "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, the Signor Mazarin, 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 purpose.'" Aramis did not reply a single word. "Well," she said, "what are you thinking about?" "I am making certain additions," said Aramis. "And M. Fouquet subtractions. I, on the other hand, am trying the art of multiplication. What excellent calculators we are! How well we could understand one another!" "Will you allow me to reflect?" said Aramis. "No, for with such an opening between people like ourselves, 'yes,' or 'no,' is the only answer, and that an immediate one." "It is a snare," thought the bishop; "it is impossible that Anne of Austria could listen to such a woman as this." "Well!" said the duchesse. "Well, madame, I should be very much astonished if M. Fouquet had five hundred thousand francs at his disposal at the present moment."