er, minister of War, Lionne, minister of State, and
Fouquet, minister of the Treasury. He informed them that he should
continue them in office, but that henceforth he should dispense with
the services of a prime minister, and that they would be responsible
to him alone. The young king was then twenty-two years of age. He was
very poorly educated, had hitherto developed no force of character,
and appeared to all to be simply a frivolous, pompous, self-conceited
young man of pleasure.

Fouquet had held the keys of the treasury. When the king needed money
he applied to him for a supply. The almost invariable reply he
received was,

"Sire, the treasury is empty, but his eminence will undoubtedly
advance to your majesty a loan."

The money came, the king little cared where from while reveling in
luxury, and dancing and flirting with the beauties who crowded his
court.

Fouquet was an able but thoroughly unprincipled man. He had grown
enormously rich by robbing the treasury. The king disliked him. But
Fouquet knew that the king could not dispense with his services. He
was a marvelously efficient financier, and well knew how to wrench
gold from the hands of the starving millions. The property he had
acquired by fraud was so great that he often outvied the king in the
splendor of his establishments. Conscious of his power, he doubted not
that he should still be able to hold the king, in a measure, subject
to his control.

Scarcely had Louis returned from his brief conference with his
ministers to his cabinet at the Louvre, ere the secretary of the
deceased cardinal, M. Colbert, entered, and requested a private
audience. He informed the king, to his astonishment and inexpressible
delight, that the cardinal had concealed fifteen millions of money
(three millions of dollars) in addition to the sums mentioned in his
will; that it was doubtless his intention that this money should
immediately replenish the utterly exhausted treasury of his majesty.

The king was overjoyed. He could scarcely believe the intelligence.
Concealing the tidings from Fouquet, he speedily and secretly
recovered the money from the several places in which it had been
deposited. Fifteen millions of francs would be a large sum at any
time, but two hundred years ago it was worth three or four times as
much as now. Fouquet was utterly bewildered in attempting to imagine
where the king had obtained the sums he was so lavishly expending.

Louis XIV. by na