voice or look, anything which injuriously
affected a single syllable of the remark he had made; he did not pass
one eulogium, as it were, in order to acquire the right of making
two reproaches. The king comprehended him, and yielding to so much
generosity and address, he said, "You praise M. Colbert, then?"

"Yes, sire, I praise him; for, besides being a man of merit, I believe
him to be devoted to your majesty's interests."

"Is that because he has often interfered with your own views?" said the
king, smiling.

"Exactly, sire."

"Explain yourself."

"It is simple enough. I am the man who is needed to make the money come
in; he is the man who is needed to prevent it leaving."

"Nay, nay, monsieur le surintendant, you will presently say something
which will correct this good opinion."

"Do you mean as far as administrative abilities are concerned, sire?"

"Yes."

"Not in the slightest."

"Really?"

"Upon my honor, sire, I do not know throughout France a better clerk
than M. Colbert."

This word "clerk" did not possess, in 1661, the somewhat subservient
signification attached to it in the present day; but, as spoken by
Fouquet, whom the king had addressed as the superintendent, it seemed
to acquire an insignificant and petty character, that at this juncture
served admirably to restore Fouquet to his place, and Colbert to his
own.

"And yet," said Louis XIV., "it was Colbert, however, that,
notwithstanding his economy, had the arrangement of my _fetes_ here at
Fontainebleau; and I assure you, Monsieur Fouquet, that in now way has
he checked the expenditure of money." Fouquet bowed, but did not reply.

"Is it not your opinion too?" said the king.

"I think, sire," he replied, "that M. Colbert has done what he had to do
in an exceedingly orderly manner, and that he deserves, in this respect,
all the praise your majesty may bestow upon him."

The word "orderly" was a proper accompaniment for the word "clerk." The
king possessed that extreme sensitiveness of organization, that delicacy
of perception, which pierced through and detected the regular order of
feelings and sensations, before the actual sensations themselves, and
he therefore comprehended that the clerk had, in Fouquet's opinion, been
too full of method and order in his arrangements; in other words, that
the magnificent _fetes_ of Fontainebleau might have been rendered more
magnificent still. The king consequently felt that there was something