oo well that you never set a right value
upon your silence and secrecy. Push that table a little towards me,
duchesse, and I will write you an order on M. Colbert; no, on M.
Fouquet, who is a far more courteous and obliging man."

"Will he pay it, though?"

"If he will not pay it, I will; but it will be the first time he will
have refused me."

The queen wrote and handed the duchesse the order, and afterwards
dismissed her with a warm embrace.

Chapter XLV. How Jean de La Fontaine Came to Write His First Tale.

All these intrigues are exhausted; the human mind, so variously
complicated, has been enabled to develop itself at its ease in the three
outlines with which our recital has supplied it. It is not unlikely
that, in the future we are now preparing, a question of politics and
intrigues may still arise, but the springs by which they work will be
so carefully concealed that no one will be able to see aught but flowers
and paintings, just as at a theater, where a colossus appears upon the
scene, walking along moved by the small legs and slender arms of a child
concealed within the framework.

We now return to Saint-Mande, where the superintendent was in the habit
of receiving his select confederacy of epicureans. For some time past
the host had met with nothing but trouble. Every one in the house was
aware of and felt for the minister's distress. No more magnificent or
recklessly improvident _reunions_. Money had been the pretext assigned
by Fouquet, and never _was_ any pretext, as Gourville said, more
fallacious, for there was not even a shadow of money to be seen.

M. Vatel was resolutely painstaking in keeping up the reputation of the
house, and yet the gardeners who supplied the kitchens complained of
ruinous delays. The agents for the supply of Spanish wines sent drafts
which no one honored; fishermen, whom the superintendent engaged on the
coast of Normandy, calculated that if they were paid all that was due to
them, the amount would enable them to retire comfortably for life; fish,
which, at a later period, was the cause of Vatel's death, did not arrive
at all. However, on the ordinary reception days, Fouquet's friends
flocked in more numerously than ever. Gourville and the Abbe Fouquet
talked over money matters--that is to say, the abbe borrowed a few
pistoles from Gourville; Pelisson, seated with his legs crossed, was
engaged in finishing the peroration of a speech with which Fouquet
was to open th