Ten Years Later

by Alexandre Dumas

  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," repliedColbert, coolly. "And yet it is very possible that, according to histheological ideas, your eminence has been, in a certain degree, in thewrong. 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 outthat you had committed these wrongs? Against the king?!"

  Mazarin shrugged his shoulders. "As if I had not saved both his stateand his finances."

  "That admits of no contradiction, my lord."

  "Does it? Then I have received a merely legitimate salary, in spite ofthe opinion of my confessor?"

  "That is beyond doubt."

  "And I might fairly keep for my own family, which is so needy, a goodfortune,--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 goodadvice," replied Mazarin, greatly delighted.

  Colbert resumed his pedantic look. "My lord," interrupted he, "I thinkit would be quite as well to examine whether what the Theatin said isnot 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 eminenceconsulted him. Did not I hear him say--'Distinguish that which the kinghas given you from that which you have given yourself.' Recollect, mylord, if he did not say something a little like that to you?--that isquite a theatrical speech."

  "That is possible."

  "In which case, my lord, I should consider you as required by theTheatin 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 theconfessor did."

  "To make restitution of a part,--that is to say, his majesty's part; andthat, monseigneur, may have its dangers. Your eminence is too skillful apolitician not to know that, at this moment, the king does not possess ahundred 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 monthsago."

  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--Ihave my purse--surely I would do much for his majesty's welfare--somelegacy--but I cannot disappoint my family."

  "The legacy of a part would dishonor you and offend the king. Leavinga part to his majesty is to avow that that part has inspired you withdoubts 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 offigures which are found in France have passed in review before me, andif I have painfully nailed them into my brain, they are there now sowell riveted, that, from the office of M. Letellier, who is sober, tothe little secret largesses of M. Fouquet, who is prodigal, I couldrecite, figure by figure, all the money that is spent in France fromMarseilles to Cherbourg."

  "Then, you would have me throw all my money into the coffers of theking!" cried Mazarin, ironically; and from whom, at the same time,the gout forced painful moans. "Surely the king would reproach me withnothing, but he would laugh at me, while squandering my millions, andwith 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 tohim."

  "Ah," replied Colbert, "that is because your eminence, absorbed as youare by your disease, entirely loses sight of the character of LouisXIV."

  "How so?"

  "That character, if I may venture to express myself thus, resembles thatwhich 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?"

  "Well, my lord, if I have divined rightly, your eminence has but to giveall your money to the king, and that immediately."

  "But for what?" said Mazarin, quite bewildered.

  "Because the king will not accept of the whole."

  "What, and he a young man, and devoured by ambition?"

  "Just so."

  "A young man who is anxious for my death----"

  "My lord!"

  "To inherit, yes, Colbert, yes; he is anxious for my death in order toinherit. Triple fool that I am! I would prevent him!"

  "Exactly: if the donation were made in a certain form he would refuseit."

  "Well, but how?"

  "That is plain enough. A young man who has yet done nothing--who burnsto distinguish himself--who burns to reign alone, will never takeanything ready built, he will construct for himself. This prince,monseigneur, will never be content with the Palais Royal, which M. deRichelieu left him, nor with the Palais Mazarin, which you have hadso superbly constructed, nor with the Louvre, which his ancestorsinhabited; nor with St. Germain, where he was born. All that does notproceed from himself, I predict, he will disdain."

  "And you will guarantee, that if I give my forty millions to theking----"

  "Saying certain things to him at the same time, I guarantee he willrefuse them."

  "But those things--what are they?"

  "I will write them, if my lord will have the goodness to dictate them."

  "Well, but, after all, what advantage will that be to me?"

  "An enormous one. Nobody will afterwards be able to accuse your eminenceof that unjust avarice with which pamphleteers have reproached the mostbrilliant mind of the present age."

  "You are right, Colbert, you are right; go, and seek the king, on mypart, and take him my will."

  "Your donation, my lord."

  "But, if he should accept it; if he should even think of accepting it!"

  "Then there would remain thirteen millions for your family, and that isa good round sum."

  "But then you would be either a fool or a traitor."

  "And I am neither the one nor the other, my lord. You appear to be muchafraid that the king will accept; you have a deal more reason to fearthat he will not accept."

  "But, see you, if he does not accept, I should like to guarantee mythirteen reserved millions to him--yes, I will do so--yes. But my painsare returning, I shall faint. I am very, very ill, Colbert; I am verynear my end!"

  Colbert started. The cardinal was indeed very ill; large drops of sweatflowed down upon his bed of agony, and the frightful pallor of aface streaming with water was a spectacle which the most hardenedpractitioner could not have beheld without compassion. Colbert was,without doubt, very much affected, for he quitted the chamber, callingBernouin to attend the dying man and went into the corridor. There,walking about with a meditative expression, which almost gave nobilityto his vulgar head, his shoulders thrown up, his neck stretched out,his lips half open, to give vent to unconnected fragments of incoherentthoughts, he lashed up his courage to the pitch of the undertakingcontemplated, whilst within ten paces of him, separated only by a wall,his master was being stifled by anguish which drew from him lamentablecries, thinking no more of the treasures of the earth, or of the joysof Paradise, but much of all the horrors of hell. Whilst burning-hotnapkins, physic, revulsives, and Guenaud, who was recalled,
wereperforming their functions with increased activity, Colbert, holdinghis great head in both his hands, to compress within it the fever ofthe projects engendered by the brain, was meditating the tenor of thedonation he would make Mazarin write, at the first hour of respite hisdisease should afford him. It would appear as if all the cries of thecardinal, and all the attacks of death upon this representative of thepast, were stimulants for the genius of this thinker with thebushy eyebrows, who was turning already towards the rising sun of aregenerated society. Colbert resumed his place at Mazarin's pillow atthe first interval of pain, and persuaded him to dictate a donation thusconceived.

  "About to appear before God, the Master of mankind, I beg the king,who was my master on earth, to resume the wealth which his bounty hasbestowed upon me, and which my family would be happy to see passinto such illustrious hands. The particulars of my property will befound--they are drawn up--at the first requisition of his majesty, or atthe last sigh of his most devoted servant,

  "Jules, Cardinal de Mazarin."

  The cardinal sighed heavily as he signed this; Colbert sealed thepacket, and carried it immediately to the Louvre, whither the king hadreturned.

  He then went back to his own home, rubbing his hands with the confidenceof a workman who has done a good day's work.

  CHAPTER 47. How Anne of Austria gave one Piece of Advice to Louis XIV.,and how M. Fouquet gave him another.