It was a happy moment for the artist; it was an unhappy moment for M.Percerin, who was walking behind Fouquet, and was engaged in admiring, in Lebrun's painting, the suit that he had made for his majesty, a perfect _objet d'art_, as he called it, which was not to be matched except in the wardrobe of the surintendant.

His distress and his exclamations were interrupted by a signal which had been given from the summit of the mansion.

In the direction of Melun, in the still empty, open plain, the sentinels of Vaux had just perceived the advancing procession of the king and the queens.

His majesty was entering Melun with his long train of carriages and cavaliers.
"In an hour--" said Aramis to Fouquet.
"In an hour!" replied the latter, sighing.
"And the people who ask one another what is the good of these royal _fetes!_" continued the bishop of Vannes, laughing, with his false smile.
"Alas! I, too, who am not the people, ask myself the same thing." "I will answer you in four and twenty hours, monseigneur.

Assume a cheerful countenance, for it should be a day of true rejoicing." "Well, believe me or not, as you like, D'Herblay," said the surintendant, with a swelling heart, pointing at the _cortege_ of Louis, visible in the horizon, "he certainly loves me but very little, and I do not care much more for him; but I cannot tell you how it is, that since he is approaching my house--" "Well, what ?" "Well, since I know he is on his way here, as my guest, he is more sacred than ever for me; he is my acknowledged sovereign, and as such is very dear to me." "Dear?
yes," said Aramis, playing upon the word, as the Abbe Terray did, at a later period, with Louis XV.
"Do not laugh, D'Herblay; I feel that, if he really seemed to wish it, I could love that young man." "You should not say that to me," returned Aramis, "but rather to M.
Colbert." "To M.Colbert!" exclaimed Fouquet.