All France commended especially the secrecy with which I had for three or four months kept a resolution of that sort, particularly as it concerned a man who had such special access to me, who had dealings with all that approached me, who received information from within and from without the kingdom, and who, of himself, must have been led by the voice of his own conscience to apprehend everything." Fouquet apprehended and became reassured by turns; the king, he said, had forgiven him all the disorder which the troubles of the times and the absolute will of Mazarin had possibly caused in the finances.

However, he was anxious when he followed Louis XIV.

to Nantes, the king being about to hold an assembly of the states of Brittany.

"Nantes, Belle-Ile! Nantes, Belle-Ile!" he kept repeating.
On arriving, Fouquet was ill and trembled as if he had the ague; he did not present himself to the king.
On the 5th of September, in the evening, the king himself wrote to the queen-mother: "My dear mother, I wrote you word this morning about the execution of the orders I had given to have the superintendent arrested; you know that I have had this matter for a long while on my mind, but it was impossible to act sooner, because I wanted him first of all to have thirty thousand crowns paid in for the marine, and because, moreover, it was necessary to see to various matters which could not be done in a day; and you cannot imagine the difficulty I had in merely finding means of speaking in private to D'Artagnan.

I felt the greatest impatience in the world to get it over, there being nothing else to detain me in this district.
[Illustration: Louis XIV.