Colbert reappeared beneath the curtains.
“Have you heard?” said Mazarin.
“Alas! yes, my lord.”
“Can he be right? Can all this money be badly acquired?”
“A Theatin, monseigneur, is a bad judge in matters of
finance,” replied Colbert, coolly. “And yet it is very
possible that, according to his theological ideas, your
eminence has been, in a certain degree, in the wrong. People
generally find they have been so, — when they die.”
“In the first place, they commit the wrong of dying,
Colbert.”
“That is true, my lord. Against whom, however, did the
Theatin make out that you had committed these wrongs?
Against the king?!”
Mazarin shrugged his shoulders. “As if I had not saved both
his state and his finances.”
“That admits of no contradiction, my lord.”
“Does it? Then I have received a merely legitimate salary,
in spite of the opinion of my confessor?”
“That is beyond doubt.”
“And I might fairly keep for my own family, which is so
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needy, a good fortune, — the whole, even, of which I have
earned?”
“I see no impediment to that, monseigneur.”
“I felt assured that in consulting you, Colbert, I should
have good advice,” replied Mazarin, greatly delighted.
Colbert resumed his pedantic look. “My lord,” interrupted
he, “I think it would be quite as well to examine whether
what the Theatin said is not a snare.”
“Oh! no; a snare? What for? The Theatin is an honest man.”
“He believed your eminence to be at death’s door, because
your eminence consulted him. Did not I hear him say —
`Distinguish that which the king has given you from that
which you have given yourself.’ Recollect, my lord, if he
did not say something a little like that to you? — that is
quite a theatrical speech.”
“That is possible.”
“In which case, my lord, I should consider you as required
by the Theatin to —- ”
“To make restitution!” cried Mazarin, with great warmth.
“Eh! I do not say no.”
“What, of all! You do not dream of such a thing! You speak
just as the confessor did.”
“To make restitution of a part, — that is to say, his
majesty’s part; and that, monseigneur, may have its dangers.
Your eminence is too skillful a politician not to know that,
at this moment, the king does not possess a hundred and
fifty thousand livres clear in his coffers.”
“That is not my affair,” said Mazarin, triumphantly; “that
belongs to M. le Surintendant Fouquet, whose accounts I gave
you to verify some months ago.”
Colbert bit his lips at the name of Fouquet. “His majesty,”
said he, between his teeth, “has no money but that which M.
Fouquet collects: your money, monseigneur, would afford him
a delicious banquet.”
“Well, but I am not the superintendent of his majesty’s
finances — I have my purse — surely I would do much for
his majesty’s welfare — some legacy — but I cannot
disappoint my family.”
“The legacy of a part would dishonor you and offend the
king. Leaving a part to his majesty is to avow that that
part has inspired you with doubts as to the lawfulness of
the means of acquisition.”
“Monsieur Colbert!”
“I thought your eminence did me the honor to ask my advice?”
“Yes, but you are ignorant of the principal details of the
question.”
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“I am ignorant of nothing, my lord; during ten years, all
the columns of figures which are found in France have passed
in review before me, and if I have painfully nailed them
into my brain, they are there now so well riveted, that,
from the office of M. Letellier, who is sober, to the little
secret largesses of M. Fouquet, who is prodigal, I could
recite, figure by figure, all the money that is spent in
France from Marseilles to Cherbourg.”
“Then, you would have me throw all my money into the coffers
of the king!” cried Mazarin, ironically; and from whom, at
the same time, the gout forced painful moans. “Surely the
king would reproach me with nothing, but he would laugh at
me, while squandering my millions, and with good reason.”