had a slight personal
interest? On the contrary, it is a very great interest, and I will prove
it to you, by resuming what I was saying. If you procure me a personal
interview with her majesty, I will be satisfied with the three hundred
thousand francs I have claimed: if not, I shall keep my letters, unless,
indeed, you give me, on the spot, five hundred thousand francs for
them."

And, rising from her seat with this decisive remark, the old duchesse
plunged M. Colbert into a disagreeable perplexity. To bargain any
further was out of the question; and not to bargain was to pay a great
deal too dearly for them. "Madame," he said, "I shall have the pleasure
of handing you over a hundred thousand crowns; but how shall I get the
actual letters themselves?"

"In the simplest manner in the world, my dear Monsieur Colbert--whom
will you trust?"

The financier began to laugh silently, so that his large eyebrows went
up and down like the wings of a bat, upon the deep lines of his yellow
forehead. "No one," he said.

"You surely will make an exception in your own favor, Monsieur Colbert?"

"In what way, madame?"

"I mean that if you would take the trouble to accompany me to the place
where the letters are, they would be delivered into your own hands, and
you would be able to verify and check them."

"Quite true."

"You would bring the hundred thousand crowns with you at the same time,
for I, too, do not trust any one?"

Colbert colored to the tips of his ears. Like all eminent men in the art
of figures, he was of an insolent and mathematical probity. "I will take
with me, madame," he said, "two orders for the amount agreed upon,
payable at my treasury. Will that satisfy you?"

"Would that the orders on your treasury were for two millions, Monsieur
l'Intendant! I shall have the pleasure of showing you the way, then?"

"Allow me to order my carriage."

"I have a carriage below, monsieur."

Colbert coughed like an irresolute man. He imagined, for a moment, that
the proposition of the duchesse was a snare; that perhaps some one was
waiting at the door; and that she, whose secret had just been sold to
Colbert for a hundred thousand crowns, had already offered it to Fouquet
for the same sum. As he still hesitated a good deal, the duchesse looked
at him full in the face.

"You prefer your own carriage?" she said.

"I admit that I do."

"You suppose that I am going to lead you into a snare or trap of some
sort or o