Part 29

— It is not my concern, said Mazarin triumphantly, it is that of M. the superintendent Fouquet, whose accounts I have given you to verify these past few months.

Colbert pursed his lips at the mere name of Fouquet.

— His Majesty, he said through his teeth, has no money but that which M. Fouquet amasses; your own money, my lord, will be a dainty morsel for him.

— After all, I am not the king's superintendent of finances; I have my own purse... Certainly, for the happiness of His Majesty, I would do well... to make some bequests... but I cannot defraud my family...

— A partial bequest dishonors you and offends the king. A part left to His Majesty is the admission that this part inspired in you some doubts as not being legitimately acquired.

— Monsieur Colbert!...

— I thought Your Eminence did me the honor of asking my advice.

— Yes, but you are ignorant of the principal details of the question.

— I am ignorant of nothing, my lord; for ten years I have been reviewing all the columns of figures made in France, and if I painfully nailed them into my head, they are now so riveted there that from the office of M. Letellier, who is frugal, to the small secret largesses of M. Fouquet, who is prodigal, I could recite, figure by figure, all the money spent from Marseille to Cherbourg.

— Then you would have me throw all my money into the king's coffers! cried Mazarin ironically, whose gout wrung from him at the same time several painful sighs. Certainly, the king would reproach me with nothing, but he would mock me while eating my millions, and he would be quite right.

— Your Eminence has not understood me. I have not in the least pretended that the king ought to spend your money.

— You say it clearly, it seems to me, in advising me to give it to him.

— Ah! replied Colbert, it is that Your Eminence, absorbed as she is by her illness, completely loses sight of the character of His Majesty Louis XIV.

— How so?...

— That character, I believe, if I dare express myself thus, resembles that which Monseigneur was confessing just now to the Theatin.

— Dare; it is?...

— It is pride. Pardon, my lord; I meant dignity. Kings have no pride: it is a human passion.

— Pride, yes, you are right. And then?...

— Well! my lord, if I have guessed rightly, Your Eminence has only to give all her money to the king, and at once.

— But why? said Mazarin, much intrigued.

— Because the king will not accept the whole.

— Oh! a young man who has no money and is eaten up with ambition.

— Granted.

— A young man who desires my death.

— My lord...

— To inherit, yes, Colbert; yes, he desires my death to inherit. Triple fool that I am! I would forestall him!

— Precisely. If the gift is made in a certain form, he will refuse.

— Come now!

— It is certain. A young man who has done nothing, who burns to become illustrious, who burns to reign alone, will take nothing ready-made; he will want to build himself. That prince, my lord, will not content himself with the Palais-Royal that M. de Richelieu left him, nor with the Palais Mazarin that you had so superbly built, nor with the Louvre that his ancestors inhabited, nor with Saint-Germain where he was born. All that does not proceed from him, he will disdain, I predict it.

— And you guarantee that if I give my forty millions to the king...

— By saying certain things to him, I guarantee that he will refuse.

— Those things... are?

— I will write them, if Monseigneur will dictate them to me.

— But after all, what advantage for me?

— An enormous one. No one can any longer accuse Your Eminence of that unjust avarice which the pamphleteers reproached to the most brilliant mind of this century.

— You are right, Colbert, you are right; go find the king on my behalf and bring him my will.

— A deed of gift, my lord.

— But if he accepted! if he were to accept?

— Then there would remain thirteen millions for your family, and that is a pretty sum.

— But then you would be a traitor or a fool.

— And I am neither one nor the other, my lord... You seem to me to fear greatly that the king may accept... Oh! fear rather that he may not accept...

— If he does not accept, you see, I want to guarantee him my thirteen millions in reserve... Yes, I will do it... Yes... But here comes the pain; I am going to faint... It is that I am ill, Colbert, that I am near my end.

Colbert started.

The cardinal was indeed very ill: he sweated great drops upon his bed of suffering, and that frightful pallor of a face streaming with water was a sight that the most hardened practitioner could not have borne without compassion. Colbert was no doubt very moved, for he left the chamber calling Bernouin to the dying man and passed into the corridor. There, walking to and fro with a meditative expression that gave almost a nobility to his vulgar head, his shoulders rounded, his neck stretched, his lips parted to let escape disconnected fragments of incoherent thoughts, he emboldened himself to the step he wished to attempt, while ten paces from him, separated only by a wall, his master was suffocating in anguishes that wrung lamentable cries from him, thinking no more either of the treasures of earth or the joys of paradise, but only of all the horrors of hell.

While the hot cloths, the topical applications, the revulsives, and Guénaud, recalled to the cardinal's side, were functioning with ever-increasing activity, Colbert, holding his big head in both hands, to compress there the fever of projects engendered by his brain, meditated the tenor of the deed of gift that he was going to have Mazarin write at the first hour of respite the illness should give him. It seemed that all those cries of the cardinal and all those onsets of death upon this representative of the past were stimulants for the genius of that thick-browed thinker who was already turning toward the rising of the new sun of a regenerated society.

Colbert returned to Mazarin when reason had come back to the sick man, and persuaded him to dictate a deed of gift conceived thus: "Near to appearing before God, master of men, I pray the king, who was my master upon earth, to take back the goods that his goodness had given me, and which my family will be happy to see pass into such illustrious hands. The detail of my goods is drawn up and will be found at the first requisition of His Majesty, or at the last breath of his most devoted servant. Jules, cardinal of Mazarin." The cardinal signed with a sigh; Colbert sealed the packet and carried it immediately to the Louvre, where the king had just returned. Then he went back to his lodging, rubbing his hands with the confidence of a workman who has well employed his day.

Chapter XLVII — How Anne of Austria gave counsel to Louis XIV, and how M. Fouquet gave him another

The news of the extremity in which the cardinal lay had already spread, and it attracted at least as many people to the Louvre as the news of the marriage of Monsieur, the king's brother, which had already been announced as an official fact.

Scarcely had Louis XIV returned home, still dreamy from the things he had seen or heard that evening, when the usher announced that the same crowd of courtiers who had thronged his levee in the morning was presenting itself anew at his coucher, a signal favor which, since the cardinal's reign, the court, very indiscreet in its preferences, had accorded the minister with little care to displease the king. But the minister had had, as we have said, a severe attack of gout, and the tide of flattery was rising toward the throne. Courtiers have that marvelous instinct of scenting all events in advance; courtiers have the supreme science: they are diplomats to illuminate the great denouements of difficult circumstances, captains to divine the issue of battles, physicians to cure diseases.

Louis XIV, to whom his mother had taught this axiom, among many others, understood that Monseigneur the cardinal Mazarin was very ill indeed. Scarcely had Anne of Austria conducted the young queen to her apartments and relieved her brow of the weight of the ceremonial headdress, than she came back to find her son in the cabinet where, alone, gloomy and ulcerated at heart, he was passing over himself, as to exercise his will, one of those silent and terrible rages, rages of a king, which make events when they burst forth, and which, in Louis XIV, thanks to his marvelous power over himself, became so benign storms that his most violent, his only rage, that which Saint-Simon notes while wondering at it, was that famous rage which burst fifty years later over a hiding-place of M. the duke of Maine, and which had for result a hail of cane-strokes given upon the back of a poor lackey who had stolen a biscuit.

The young king was therefore, as we have seen, in the grip of a painful over-excitement, and he said to himself looking in a mirror:

— O king!... king in name, and not in fact... phantom, vain phantom that you are!... inert statue who hast no other power than to provoke a salute from courtiers, when then can you lift your velvet arm, clench your silk hand? when can you open, for aught else than to sigh or smile, your lips condemned to the stupid immobility of the marbles of your gallery?

Then, passing his hand over his brow and seeking air, he approached the window and saw below some horsemen who were talking among themselves, some timidly curious groups. Those horsemen were a fraction of the watch; that group was the eager ones of the people, those for whom a king is always a curious thing, like a rhinoceros, a crocodile, or a serpent.

He struck his brow with the flat of his hand crying:

— King of France! what a title! People of France! what a mass of creatures! And here I return to my Louvre; my horses, scarce unharnessed, are still steaming, and I have just raised enough interest for scarcely twenty persons to watch me pass... Twenty... what do I say! no, there are not even twenty curious ones for the king of France, there are not even ten archers to watch over my house: archers, people, guards, all are at the Palais-Royal. Why, my God? I, the king, have I not the right to ask you that?

— Because, said a voice answering his, and which rang from the other side of the cabinet door-curtain, because at the Palais-Royal there is all the gold, that is to say all the power of him who would reign.

Louis turned precipitately.

The voice that had just pronounced these words was that of Anne of Austria. The king started, and advancing toward his mother:

— I hope, said he, that Your Majesty did not pay attention to the vain declamations with which solitude and the disgust familiar to kings give the idea to the happiest characters?

— I paid attention to but one thing, my son: it is that you were complaining.

— I? not at all, said Louis XIV; no, in truth; you are mistaken, madame.

— What were you doing then, Sire?

— It seemed to me to be under the rod of my tutor and to develop a theme of amplification.

— My son, resumed Anne of Austria shaking her head, you are wrong not to trust my word; you are wrong not to grant me your confidence. A day will come, perhaps a near one, when you will need to recall this axiom: "Gold is all-powerful, and those alone are truly kings who are all-powerful."

— Your intention, pursued the king, was however not to cast a blame upon the rich of this century?

— No, said Anne of Austria quickly, no, Sire; those who are rich in this century, under your reign, are rich because you have well willed it, and I have against them neither rancor nor envy; they have no doubt served His Majesty well enough for His Majesty to have permitted them to reward themselves. That is what I mean by the words you seem to reproach me with.

— God forbid, madame, that I should ever reproach anything to my mother!

— Besides, continued Anne of Austria, the Lord never gives the goods of the earth but for a time; the Lord, as corrective to honors and riches, the Lord has put suffering, illness, death, and none, added Anne of Austria with a painful smile which proved that she applied to herself the funereal precept, none carries his wealth or his greatness into the tomb. It results therefrom that the young reap the fruits of the fertile harvest prepared by the old.

Louis listened with growing attention to these words accented by Anne of Austria in an evidently consoling purpose.

— Madame, said Louis XIV looking fixedly at his mother, one would say, in truth, that you have something more to announce to me?

— I have absolutely nothing, my son; only, you will have remarked this evening that M. the cardinal is very ill?

Louis looked at his mother, seeking an emotion in her voice, a pain in her countenance. The face of Anne of Austria seemed slightly altered; but this suffering had a wholly personal character.

Perhaps this alteration was caused by the cancer which was beginning to gnaw at her breast.

— Yes, madame, said the king, yes, M. de Mazarin is very ill.

— And it would be a great loss for the kingdom if His Eminence were called by God. Is not that your opinion as well as mine, my son? asked Anne of Austria.

— Yes, madame, yes certainly, it would be a great loss for the kingdom, said Louis blushing; but the peril is not so great, it seems to me, and besides M. the cardinal is still young. The king had scarce finished speaking when an usher lifted the tapestry and stood, a paper in his hand, waiting for the king to question him.

— What is that? asked the king.

— A message from M. de Mazarin, answered the usher.

— Give it, said the king.

And he took the paper. But, at the moment he was about to open it, there arose at once a great noise in the gallery, in the antechambers, and in the court.

— Ah! ah! said Louis XIV, who no doubt recognized that triple noise, what was I saying then, that there was but one king in France! I was mistaken, there are two.

At this moment, the door opened, and the superintendent of finances Fouquet appeared before Louis XIV. It was he who made that noise in the gallery; it was his lackeys who made that noise in the antechambers; it was his horses who made that noise in the court. Besides, one heard a long murmur at his passage which was not extinguished until long after he had passed. It was that murmur which Louis XIV so greatly regretted not to hear beneath his steps and dying behind him.

— That one is not precisely a king as you believe, said Anne of Austria to her son; he is a man too rich, that is all.

And in saying these words, a bitter feeling gave to the queen's words their most hateful expression; while the brow of Louis, on the contrary, remained calm and master of himself, pure of the slightest wrinkle. He therefore freely saluted Fouquet with his head, while he continued to unfold the roll that the usher had just given him. Fouquet saw this movement, and, with a politeness at once easy and respectful, he approached Anne of Austria to leave the king full liberty. Louis had opened the paper, and yet he did not read. He listened to Fouquet pay his mother adorably turned compliments upon her hand and upon her arms.

The face of Anne of Austria smoothed and passed almost to a smile.

Fouquet perceived that the king, instead of reading, was looking at him and listening; he made a half-turn, and, while continuing, so to speak, to belong to Anne of Austria, he turned to face the king.

— You know, Monsieur Fouquet, said Louis XIV, that His Eminence is very ill?

— Yes, Sire, I know that, said Fouquet; and indeed she is very ill. I was at my country-house of Vaux when the news reached me, so pressing that I left everything.

— You left Vaux this evening, Monsieur?

— An hour and a half ago, yes, Your Majesty, said Fouquet, consulting a watch all set with diamonds.

— An hour and a half! said the king, powerful enough to master his anger, but not to hide his astonishment.

— I understand, Sire, Your Majesty doubts my word, and she is right; but, if I have come thus, it is truly by a marvel. I had been sent from England three pairs of very lively horses, I was assured; they were stationed four leagues apart, and I tried them this evening. They indeed came from Vaux to the Louvre in an hour and a half, and Your Majesty sees that I was not deceived.

The queen mother smiled with a secret envy. Fouquet went to meet that evil thought.

— Also, madame, he hastened to add, such horses are made, not for subjects, but for kings, for kings should never yield to anyone in anything.

The king lifted his head.

— However, interrupted Anne of Austria, you are not a king, that I know, Monsieur Fouquet?

— Also, madame, the horses await but a sign from His Majesty to enter the stables of the Louvre; and if I permitted myself to try them, it was in the sole fear of offering the king something that was not precisely a marvel.

The king had become very red.

— You know, Monsieur Fouquet, said the queen, that the custom is not at the court of France for a subject to offer anything to his king?

Louis made a movement.

— I hoped, madame, said Fouquet much agitated, that my love for His Majesty, my incessant desire to please him, would serve as counterweight to that reason of etiquette. It was besides not a gift that I presumed to offer, it was a tribute that I paid.

— Thank you, Monsieur Fouquet, said the king politely, and I am grateful for the intention, for I indeed love good horses; but you know that I am very poor; you know it better than anyone, you, my superintendent of finances. I cannot therefore, even did I wish it, buy so costly a team.

Fouquet launched a proud glance at the queen mother who seemed to triumph in the false position of the minister, and replied:

— Luxury is the virtue of kings, Sire; it is luxury that makes them resemble God; it is by luxury that they are more than other men. With luxury a king nourishes his subjects and honors them. Under the sweet warmth of this luxury of kings is born the luxury of private persons, source of riches for the people. His Majesty, in accepting the gift of six incomparable horses, would have piqued the pride of the breeders of our country, of the Limousin, of the Perche, of Normandy; this emulation would have been profitable to all... But the king is silent, and consequently I am condemned.

During this time, Louis XIV, for appearance' sake, folded and unfolded Mazarin's paper, on which he had not yet cast his eyes. His sight at last rested thereon, and he gave a little cry at the first line.

— What is it then, my son? asked Anne of Austria, drawing quickly near the king.

— From the cardinal? resumed the king, continuing his reading. Yes, yes, it is indeed from him.

— Is he then worse?

— Read, finished the king, passing the parchment to his mother, as if he had thought that nothing less than reading was needed to convince Anne of Austria of a thing as astonishing as that enclosed in this paper.

Anne of Austria read in her turn. As she read, her eyes sparkled with a livelier joy that she tried in vain to dissimulate and which attracted Fouquet's glances.

— Oh! a regular deed of gift, said she.

— A deed of gift? repeated Fouquet.

— Yes, said the king answering particularly the superintendent of finances; yes, upon the point of death, M. the cardinal makes me a gift of all his goods.

— Forty millions! cried the queen. Ah! my son, that is a fine stroke on the part of M. the cardinal, and which will contradict many malicious rumors; forty millions slowly amassed and which return at a single stroke in bulk to the royal treasury, is of a faithful subject and a true Christian.

And having cast her eyes once more upon the deed, she returned it to Louis XIV, whom the statement of that sum made all palpitating. Fouquet had stepped back a few paces and held his peace. The king looked at him and tendered him the roll in his turn. The superintendent but rested his haughty glance thereon for a second.

Then, bowing:

— Yes, Sire, said he, a deed of gift, I see it.

— He must be answered, my son, cried Anne of Austria; he must be answered at once.

— And how so, madame?

— By a visit to the cardinal.

— But it is scarcely an hour since I left His Eminence, said the king.

— Write then, Sire.

— Write! said the young king with repugnance.

— In short, resumed Anne of Austria, it seems to me, my son, that a man who has just made such a present is well entitled to expect to be thanked with some haste.

Then, turning toward the superintendent:

— Is that not your opinion, Monsieur Fouquet?

— The present is worth it, yes, madame, replied the superintendent with a nobility that did not escape the king.

— Accept then and thank him, insisted Anne of Austria.

— What says Monsieur Fouquet? asked Louis XIV.

— His Majesty wishes to know my thought?

— Yes.

— Thank him, Sire...

— Ah! said Anne of Austria.

— But do not accept, continued Fouquet.

— And why so? asked Anne of Austria.

— But you said it yourselves, madame, replied Fouquet, because kings ought not and cannot receive presents from their subjects.

The king remained mute between these two so opposite opinions.

— But forty millions! said Anne of Austria in the same tone with which poor Marie-Antoinette said later: "You will tell me such things!"

— I know it, said Fouquet laughing, forty millions make a fine sum, and such a sum might tempt even a royal conscience.

— But, Monsieur, said Anne of Austria, instead of turning the king from receiving this present, do observe to His Majesty, you whose charge it is, that these forty millions make him a fortune.

— It is precisely, madame, because these forty millions make a fortune that I say to the king: "Sire, if it is not decent that a king accept from a subject six horses of twenty thousand livres, it is dishonoring that he should owe his fortune to another subject more or less scrupulous in the choice of materials which contributed to the building of that fortune."

— It ill befits you, Monsieur, said Anne of Austria, to give the king a lesson; rather procure him forty millions to replace those you make him lose.

— The king shall have them when he wills, said the superintendent of finances, bowing.

— Yes, by grinding the people, said Anne of Austria.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”