The Donation.
Colbert reappeared beneath the curtains.
"Have you heard?" said Mazarin.
"Alas! yes, my lord."
"Can he be right? Can all this money be badly acquired?"
"A Theatin, monseigneur, is a bad judge in matters of finance," replied Colbert, coolly. "And yet it is very possible that, according to his theological views, your eminence has been, in a certain degree, in the wrong. People generally find they have been so, - when they die."
"In the first place, they commit the wrong of dying, Colbert."
"That is true, my lord. Against whom, however, did the Theatin make out that you had committed these wrongs? Against the king?"
Mazarin shrugged his shoulders. "As if I had not saved both his state and his finances."
"That admits of no contradiction, my lord."
"Does it? Then I have received a merely legitimate salary, in spite of the opinion of my confessor?"
"That is beyond doubt."
"And I might fairly keep for my own family, which is so needy, a good fortune, - the whole, even, of which I have earned?"
"I see no impediment to that, monseigneur."
"I felt assured that in consulting you, Colbert, I should have good advice," replied Mazarin, greatly delighted.
Colbert resumed his pedantic look. "My lord," interrupted he, "I think it would be quite as well to examine whether what the Theatin said is not a _snare_."
"Oh! no; a snare? What for? The Theatin is an honest man."
"He believed your eminence to be at death's door, because your eminence consulted him. Did I not hear him say - 'Distinguish that which the king has given you from that which you have given yourself.' Recollect, my lord, if he did not say something a little like that to you? - that is quite a theatrical speech."
"That is possible."
"In which case, my lord, I should consider you as required by the Theatin to - "
"To make restitution!" cried Mazarin, with great warmth.
"Eh! I do not say no."
"What, of all! You do not dream of such a thing! You speak just as the confessor did."
"To make restitution of a part, - that is to say, his majesty's part; and that, monseigneur, may have its dangers. Your eminence is too skillful a politician not to know that, at this moment, the king does not possess a hundred and fifty thousand livres clear in his coffers."
"That is not my affair," said Mazarin, triumphantly; "that belongs to M. le Surintendant Fouquet, whose accounts I gave you to verify some months ago."
Colbert bit his lips at the name of Fouquet. "His majesty," said he, between his teeth, "has no money but that which M. Fouquet collects: your money, monseigneur, would afford him a delicious banquet."
"Well, but I am not the superintendent of his majesty's finances - I have my purse - surely I would do much for his majesty's welfare - some legacy - but I cannot disappoint my family."
"The legacy of a part would dishonor you and offend the king. Leaving a part to his majesty, is to avow that that part has inspired you with doubts as to the lawfulness of the means of acquisition."
"Monsieur Colbert!"
"I thought your eminence did me the honor to ask my advice?"
"Yes, but you are ignorant of the principal details of the question."
"I am ignorant of nothing, my lord; during ten years, all the columns of figures which are found in France, have passed into review before me; and if I have painfully nailed them into my brain, they are there now so well riveted, that, from the office of M. Letellier, who is sober, to the little secret largesses of M. Fouquet, who is prodigal, I could recite, figure by figure, all the money that is spent in France from Marseilles to Cherbourg."
"Then, you would have me throw all my money into the coffers of the king!" cried Mazarin, ironically; and from whom, at the same time the gout forced painful moans. "Surely the king would reproach me with nothing, but he would laugh at me, while squandering my millions, and with good reason."
"Your eminence has misunderstood me. I did not, the least in the world, pretend that his majesty ought to spend your money."
"You said so, clearly, it seems to me, when you advised me to give it to him."
"Ah," replied Colbert, "that is because your eminence, absorbed as you are by your disease, entirely loses sight of the character of Louis XIV."
"How so?"
"That character, if I may venture to express myself thus, resembles that which my lord confessed just now to the Theatin."
"Go on - that is?"
"Pride! Pardon me, my lord, haughtiness, nobleness; kings have no pride, that is a human passion."
"Pride, - yes, you are right. Next?"