or
the Spanish Queen who had arrived in those regions.

There were several funeral orations on this occasion. Not a single one
of these official discourses deserved to survive the Queen. There was
very little to say about her, I admit; but these professional
panegyrists, these liars in surplice, in black cassock, or in purple and
mitre, are not too scrupulous to borrow facts and material in cases where
the dead person has neglected to furnish or bequeath it them.

In my own case I congratulated myself on this sort of indifference or
literary penury; an indiscreet person, sustained by zeal or talent, might
have wished to mortify me in a romance combined of satire and religion.

CHAPTER XXXII.

Jean Baptiste Colbert.--His Death.--His Great Works.--His Last Advice to
the Marquise.

M. Colbert had been ailing for a long time past. His face bore visible
testimony against his health, to which his accumulated and incessant
labour had caused the greatest injury. We had just married his son
Blainville to my niece, Mademoiselle de Tonnay-Charente, heiress of the
house of Rochchouart. Since this union--the King's work--M. Colbert had
somewhat tended in my favour, and I had reason to count on his good
offices and kindness. I said to him one day that my quarrel with him was
that he did not look after himself, that he ignored all his own worth,
treated himself with no more respect than a mere clerk; that he was the
indispensable man, the right hand of the King, his eye of vigilance in
everything, and the pillar of his business and his finance.

Without being precisely what one would call a modest man, M. Colbert was
calm of mind, and by nature without pose or presumption. He cared
sincerely for the King's glory. He held his tongue on the subject of
great enterprises, but employed much zeal and ability in promoting the
success of good projects and ideas, such as, for instance, our Indies and
Pondicherry.

He had known how to procure, without oppressing any one, the incalculable
sums that had been necessitated, not only by enormous and almost
universal wars, but by all those canals, all those ports in the
Mediterranean or the ocean, that vast creation of vessels, arsenals,
foundries, military houses and hospitals which we had seen springing up
in all parts. He had procured by his application, his careful
calculations, the wherewithal to build innumerable fortresses, aqueducts,
fountains, bridges, the Observatory of Pari