tanding
the repugnance you feel to increase the cash-orders [_comptants_], if I
could have foreseen that this expenditure would be so large, I should
have advised the employment of cash-orders, in order to hide the
knowledge thereof forever." [The cash-orders (_ordonnances au comptant_)
did not indicate their object, and were not revised. The king merely
wrote, Pay cash; I know the object of this expenditure (_Bon au comptant:
je sais l'objet de cette depense_).]

[Illustration: Versailles---526]

Colbert was mistaken in his fears for Louis XIV.'s glory; if the expenses
of Versailles surpassed his most gloomy apprehensions, the palace which
rose upon the site of Louis XIV.'s former hunting-box was worthy of the
king who had made it in his own image, and who managed to retain all his
court around him there, by the mere fact of his will and of his royal
presence.

Colbert was dead before Versailles was completed; the bills amounted then
to one hundred and sixteen millions; the castle of Marly, now destroyed,
cost more than four millions; money was everywhere becoming scarce; the
temper of the comptroller of finances went on getting worse. "Whereas
formerly it had been noticed that he set to his work rubbing his hands
with joy," says his secretary Perrault, brother of the celebrated
architect, "he no longer worked but with an air of vexation, and even
with sighs. From the good-natured and easy-going creature he had been,
he became difficult to deal with, and there was not so much business, by
a great deal, got through as in the early years of his administration."
"I do not mean to build any more, Mansard; I meet with too many
mortifications," the king would say to his favorite architect. He still
went on building, however; but he quarrelled with Colbert over the cost
of the great railings of Versailles. There's swindling here," said Louis
XIV. "Sir," rejoined Colbert, "I flatter myself, at any rate, that that
word does not apply to me?" "No," said the king; "but more attention
should have been shown. If you want to know what economy is, go to
Flanders; you will see how little those fortifications of the conquered
places cost."

It was Vauban whose praise the king thus sang, and Vauban, devoted to
Louvois, had for a long time past been embroiled with Colbert. The
minister felt himself beaten in the contest he had so long maintained
against Michael Le Tellier and his son. In 1664, at the death of
Chancellor S