The strokes continued.  Then the worker arose with a slight movement of impatience and walked straight up to a glass behind which the blows were struck by a hand, or by some invisible mechanism.  It was a large glass let into a panel.  Three other glasses, exactly similar to it, completed the symmetry of the apartment.  Nothing distinguished that one from the others.  Without doubt, these reiterated knocks were a signal; for, at the moment Fouquet approached the glass listening, the same noise was renewed, and in the same measure.  “Oh! oh!” murmured the intendant, with surprise, “who is yonder?  I did not expect anybody to-day.”  And without doubt, to respond to the signal, he pulled out a gilded nail near the glass, and shook it thrice.  Then returning to his place, and seating himself again, “Ma foi! let them wait,” said he.  And plunging again into the ocean of papers unrolled before him, he appeared to think of nothing now but work.  In fact, with incredible rapidity and marvelous lucidity, Fouquet deciphered the largest papers and most complicated writings, correcting them, annotating them with a pen moved as if by a fever, and the work melting under his hands, signatures, figures, references, became multiplied as if ten clerks — that is to say, a hundred fingers and ten brains had performed the duties, instead of the five fingers and single brain of this man.  From time to time, only, Fouquet, absorbed by his work, raised his head to cast a furtive glance upon a clock placed before him.  The reason of this was, Fouquet set himself a task, and when this task was once set, in one hour’s work he, by himself, did what another would not have accomplished in a day; always certain, consequently, provided he was not disturbed, of arriving at the close in the time his devouring activity had fixed.  But in the midst of his ardent labor, the soft strokes upon the little bell placed behind the glass sounded again, hasty, and, consequently, more urgent.

“The lady appears to be impatient,” said Fouquet.  “Humph! a calm!  That must be the comtesse; but, no, the comtesse is gone to Rambouillet for three days.  The presidente, then?  Oh! no, the presidente would not assume such grand airs; she would ring very humbly, then she would wait my good pleasure.  The greatest certainty is, that I do not know who it can be, but that I know who it cannot be.  And since it is not you, marquise, since it cannot be you, deuce take the rest!” And he went on with his work in spite of the reiterated appeals of the bell.  At the end of a quarter of an hour, however, impatience prevailed over Fouquet in his turn:  he might be said to consume, rather than to complete the rest of his work; he thrust his papers into his portfolio, and giving a glance at the mirror, whilst the taps continued faster than ever:  “Oh! oh!” said he, “whence comes all this racket?  What has happened, and who can the Ariadne be who expects me so impatiently.  Let us see!”