complete and entire justification.”

The king turned pale and giddy at the bare idea of the danger he had escaped.

“If M. d’Herblay,” continued Fouquet, “had been an assassin, he had no occasion to inform me of his plan in order to succeed. Freed from the real king, it would have been impossible in all futurity to guess the false. And if the usurper had been recognized by Anne of Austria, he would still have been — her son.

The usurper, as far as Monsieur d’Herblay’s conscience was concerned, was still a king of the blood of Louis XIII. Moreover, the conspirator, in that course, would have had security, secrecy, impunity. A pistol-bullet would have procured him all that. For the sake of Heaven, sire, grant me his forgiveness.”