“A prisoner!” he cried. “I — I, a prisoner!” He looked round him for a bell to summon some one to him. “There are no bells in the Bastile,” he said, “and it is in the Bastile I am imprisoned. In what way can I have been made a prisoner? It must have been owing to a conspiracy of M. Fouquet. I have been drawn to Vaux, as to a snare.

M. Fouquet cannot be acting alone in this affair. His agent — That voice that I but just now heard was M. d’Herblay’s; I recognized it. Colbert was right, then. But what is Fouquet’s object? To reign in my place and stead? — Impossible. Yet who knows!” thought the king, relapsing into gloom again. “Perhaps my brother, the Duc d’Orleans, is doing that which my uncle wished to do during the whole of