e mortals whom they held under their feet, ready to
crush them if they had liked.

"Colbert," said the king, "you have annoyed me exceedingly to-day."

"I know it, sire."

"Very good; I like that answer. Yes, you knew it, and there was courage
in having done it."

"I ran the risk of displeasing your majesty but I risked also concealing
what were your true interests from you."

"What! you were afraid of something on my account?"

"I was, sire, even if it were of nothing more than an indigestion," said
Colbert; "for people do not give their sovereigns such banquets as the
one of to-day except it be to stifle them under the weight of good
living." Colbert waited the effect which this coarse jest would produce
upon the king; and Louis XIV., who was the vainest and the most
fastidiously delicate man in his kingdom, forgave Colbert the joke.

"The truth is," he said, "that M. Fouquet has given me too good a meal.
Tell me, Colbert, where does he get all the money required for this
enormous expenditure--can you tell?"

"Yes, I do know, sire."

"Will you be able to prove it with tolerable certainty?"

"Easily; to the very farthing."

"I know you are very exact."

"It is the principal qualification required in an intendant of
finances."

"But all are not so."

"I thank your majesty for so flattering a compliment from your own
lips."

"M. Fouquet, therefore, is rich--very rich, and I suppose every man
knows he is so."

"Every one, sire; the living as well as the dead."

"What does that mean, Monsieur Colbert?"

"The living are witnesses of M. Fouquet's wealth--they admire and
applaud the result produced; but the dead, wiser and better informed
than we are, know how that wealth was obtained--and they rise up in
accusation."

"So that M. Fouquet owes his wealth to some cause or other."

"The occupation of an intendant very often favors those who practice
it."

"You have something to say to me more confidentially. I perceive; do not
be afraid, we are quite alone."

"I am never afraid of anything under the shelter of my own conscience,
and under the protection of your majesty," said Colbert, bowing.

"If the dead therefore were to speak--"

"They do speak sometimes, sire--read."

"Ah!" then murmured Aramis, in the prince's ear, who, close beside him,
listened without losing a syllable, "since you are placed here,
monseigneur, in order to learn the vocation of a king, listen to a piece
of infamy--of a