certain folks who abused their title of governors in order to
make unjust requisitions," says the king in his _Memoires,_ "I posted men
in all quarters for the express purpose of keeping myself more surely
informed of such exactions, in order to punish them as they deserved."
Order was restored in all parts of France. "The _Auvergnats,_" said a
letter to Colbert from President de Novion, "never knew so certainly that
they had a king as they do now."

"A useless banquet at a cost of a thousand crowns causes me incredible
pain," said Colbert to Louis XIV., and yet, when it is a question of
millions of gold for Poland, I would sell all my property, I would pawn
my wife and children, and I would go afoot all my life to provide for it
if necessary. Your Majesty, if it please you, will forgive me this
little transport. I begin to doubt whether the liberty I take is
agreeable to your Majesty; it has seemed to me that you were beginning to
prefer your pleasures and your diversions to everything else; at the very
time when your Majesty told me at St. Germain that the morsel must be
taken from one's mouth to provide for the increment of the naval
armament, you spent two hundred thousand livres down for a trip to
Versailles, to wit, thirteen thousand pistoles for your gambling expenses
and the queen's, and fifty thousand livres for extraordinary banquets;
you have likewise so intermingled our diversions, with the war on land
that it is difficult to separate the two, and, if your Majesty will be
graciously pleased to examine in detail the amount of useless expenditure
you have incurred, you will plainly see that, if it were all deducted,
you would not be reduced to your present necessity. The right thing to
do, sir, is to grudge five sous for unnecessary things, and to throw
millions about when it is for your glory."

Colbert knew, in fact, how to "throw millions about" when it was for
endowing France with new manufactures and industries. "One of the most
important works of peace," he used to say, "is the re-establishment of
every kind of trade in this kingdom, and to put it in a position to do
without having recourse to foreigners for the things necessary for the
use and comfort of the subjects." "We have no need of anybody, and our
neighbors have need of us;" such was the maxim laid down in a document
of that date, which has often been attributed to Colbert, and which he
certainly put incessantly into practice. The cloth