h. I know but too well that you never set a right value
upon your silence and your secrecy. Push that table a little toward me,
duchesse, and I will write you an order on M. Colbert; no, on M.
Fouquet, who is a far more courteous and obliging man."

"Will he pay it, though?"

"If he will not pay it, I will; but it will be the first time he will
have refused me."

The queen wrote and handed the duchesse the order, and afterward
dismissed her with a warm and cheerful embrace.

CHAPTER LII.

HOW JEAN DE LA FONTAINE WROTE HIS FIRST TALE.

All these intrigues are exhausted; the human mind, so variously
complicated, has been enabled to develop itself at its ease in the three
outlines with which our recital has supplied it. It is not unlikely
that, in the future we are now preparing, a question of politics and
intrigues may still arise, but the springs by which they work will be so
carefully concealed that no one will be able to see aught but flowers
and paintings, just as at a theater, where a Colossus appears upon the
scene walking along moved by the small legs and slender arms of a child
concealed within the framework.

We now return to Saint-Mande, where the surintendant was in the habit of
receiving his select society of epicureans. For some time past the host
had met with some terrible trials. Every one in the house was aware of
and felt the minister's distress. No more magnificent or recklessly
improvident reunions. Money had been the pretext assigned by Fouquet,
and never _was_ any pretext, as Gourville said, more fallacious, for
there was not the slightest appearance of money.

M. Vatel was most resolutely painstaking in keeping up the reputation of
the house, and yet the gardeners who supplied the kitchens complained of
a ruinous delay. The agents for the supply of Spanish wines frequently
sent drafts which no one honored; fishermen, whom the surintendant
engaged on the coast of Normandy, calculated that if they were paid all
that was due to them, the amount would enable them to retire comfortably
for the rest of their lives; fish, which, at a later period, was the
cause of Vatel's death, did not arrive at all. However, on the ordinary
day of reception, Fouquet's friends flocked in more numerously than
ever. Gourville and the Abbe Fouquet talked over money matters--that is
to say, the abbe borrowed a few pistoles from Gourville; Pellisson,
seated with his legs crossed, was engaged in finishing the pe