“Your friends, certainly; but the safety of the state requires that an exemplary punishment should be inflicted on the guilty.”

“I will not permit myself to remind your majesty that I have just restored you to liberty, and have saved your life.”

“Monsieur!”

“I will not allow myself to remind your majesty that had M.

d’Herblay wished to carry out his character of an assassin, he could very easily have assassinated your majesty this morning in the forest of Senart, and all would have been over.” The king started.

“A pistol-bullet through the head,” pursued Fouquet, “and the disfigured features of Louis XIV., which no one could have recognized, would be M. d’Herblay’s