"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 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 much compassion. Colbert was, without doubt, very much affected, for he quitted the chamber, calling Bernouin to attend to 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 workman who has done a good day's work.