hich 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."

"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."

"Your eminence has misunderstood me. I did not, the least in the world,
pretend that his majesty ought to spend your money."

"You said so clearly, it seems to me, when you advised me to give it to
him."

"Ah," replied Colbert, "that is because your eminence, absorbed as you
are by your disease, entirely loses sight of the character of Louis
XIV."

"How so?"

"That character, if I may venture to express myself thus, resembles that
which my lord confessed just now to the Theatin."

"Go on--that is?"

"Pride! Pardon me, my lord, haughtiness, nobleness; kings have no pride,
that is a human passion."

"Pride,--yes, you are right. Next?"

"Well, my lord, if I have divined rightly, your eminence has but to give
all your money to the king, and that immediately."

"But for what?" said Mazarin, quite bewildered.

"Because the king will not accept of the whole."

"What, and he a young man, and devoured by ambition?"

"Just so."

"A young man who is anxious for my death----"

"My lord!"

"To inherit, yes, Colbert, yes; he is anxious for my death in order to