eguier, Colbert had opposed the elevation of Le Tellier to
this office, "telling the king that, if he came in, he, Colbert, could
not serve his Majesty, as he would have him thwarting everything he
wanted to do." On leaving the council, Le Tellier said to Brienne, "You
see what a tone M. Colbert takes up; he will have to be settled with."
The antagonism had been perpetuated between Colbert and Louvois; their
rivalry in the state had been augmented by the contrary dispositions of
the two ministers. Both were passionately devoted to their work,
laborious, indefatigable, honest in money matters, and both of fierce
and domineering temper; but Louvois was more violent, more bold, less
scrupulous as to ways and means of attaining his end, cruel in the
exercise of his will and his wrath, less concerned about the sufferings
of the people, more exclusively absorbed by one fixed idea; both rendered
great service to the king, but Colbert performing for the prince and the
state only useful offices in the way of order, economy, wise and
far-sighted administration, courageous and steady opposition; Louvois
ever urging the king on according to his bent, as haughty and more
impassioned than he, entangling him and encouraging him in wars which
rendered his own services necessary, without pity for the woes he
entailed upon the nation. It was the misfortune and the great fault of
Louis XIV. that he preferred the counsels of Louvois to those of Colbert,
and that he allowed all the functions so faithfully exercised by the
dying minister to drop into the hands of his enemy and rival.

At sixty-four years of age Colbert succumbed to excess of labor and of
cares. That man, so cold and reserved, whom Madame de Sevigne called
North, and Guy-Patin the Man of Marble (_Vir marmoreus_), felt that
disgust for the things of life which appears so strikingly in the
seventeenth century amongst those who were most ardently engaged in the
affairs of the world. He was suffering from stone; the king sent to
inquire after him and wrote to him. The dying man had his eyes closed;
he did not open them. "I do not want to hear anything more about him,"
said he, when the king's letter was brought to him; "now, at any rate,
let him leave me alone." His thoughts were occupied with his soul's
salvation. Madame de Maintenon used to accuse him of always thinking
about his finances, and very little about religion. He repeated
bitterly, as the dying Cardinal Wols