CHAPTER 46
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 ideas, 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 not I 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
in 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?"
"Well, my lord, if I have divined rightly, your eminence has
but to give all 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 to inherit. Triple fool that I am! I would prevent
him!"
"Exactly: if the donation were made in a certain form he
would refuse it."
"Well, but how?"
"That is plain enough. A young man who has yet done nothing
-- who burns to distinguish himself -- who burns to reign
alone, will never take anything ready built, he will
construct for himself. This prince, monseigneur, will never
be content with the Palais Royal, which M. de Richelieu left
him, nor with the Palais Mazarin, which you have had so
superbly constructed, nor with the Louvre, which his
ancestors inhabited; nor with St. Germain, where he was
born. All that does not proceed from himself, I predict, he
will disdain."
"And you will guarantee, that if I give my forty millions to
the king ---- "
"Saying certain things to him at the same time, I guarantee
he will refuse 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 eminence of that unjust avarice with which pamphleteers
have reproached the most brilliant mind of the present age."
"You are right, Colbert, you are right; go, and seek the
king, on my part, 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 is a 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 much afraid that the king will accept; you have a deal
more reason to fear that he will not accept."
"But, see you, if he does not accept, I should like to
guarantee my thirteen reserved millions to him -- yes, I
will do so -- yes. But my pains are returning, I shall
faint. I am very, very ill, Colbert; I am very near my end!"
Colbert started. The cardinal was indeed very ill; large
drops of sweat flowed down upon his bed of agony, and the
frightful pallor of a face streaming with water was a
spectacle which the most hardened practitioner could not
have beheld without compassion. Colbert was, without doubt,
very much affected, for he quitted the chamber, calling
Bernouin to attend the dying man and went into the corridor.
There, walking about with a meditative expression, which
almost gave nobility to his vulgar head, his shoulders
thrown up, his neck stretched out, his lips half open, to
give vent to unconnected fragments of incoherent thoughts,
he lashed up his courage to the pitch of the undertaking
contemplated, whilst within ten paces of him, separated only
by a wall, his master was being stifled by anguish which
drew from him lamentable cries, thinking no more of the
treasures of the earth, or of the joys of Paradise, but much
of all the horrors of hell. Whilst burning-hot napkins,
physic, revulsives, and Guenaud, who was recalled, were
performing their functions with increased activity, Colbert,
holding his great head in both his hands, to compress within
it the fever of the projects engendered by the brain, was
meditating the tenor of the donation he would make Mazarin
write, at the first hour of respite his disease should
afford him. It would appear as if all the cries of the
cardinal, and all the attacks of death upon this
representative of the past, were stimulants for the genius
of this thinker with the bushy eyebrows, who was turning
already towards the rising sun of a regenerated society.
Colbert resumed his place at Mazarin's pillow at the first
interval of pain, and persuaded him to dictate a donation
thus conceived.
"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 has bestowed upon me, and which my family
would be happy to see pass into such illustrious hands. The
particulars of my property will be found -- they are drawn
up -- at the first requisition of his majesty, or at the
last sigh of his most devoted servant,
Jules, Cardinal de Mazarin."
The cardinal sighed heavily as he signed this; Colbert
sealed the packet, and carried it immediately to the Louvre,
whither the king had returned.
He then went back to his own home, rubbing his hands with
the confidence of a workman who has done a good day's work.
