Part 76 (1/2)
”Go on--that is?”
”Pride! Pardon s have no pride, that is a huht Next?”
”Well, ive all your , 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 a 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 uish hi ready built, he will construct for hineur, 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 frouarantee, that if I give s to hiuarantee he will refuse thes--what are they?”
”I rite theoodness to dictate thee will that be to me?”
”An enormous one nobody will afterwards be able to accuse your eminence of that unjust avarice hich pamphleteers have reproached the ht, 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 reood round sum”
”But then you would be either a fool or a traitor”
”And I am neither the one nor the other,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 hi, 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 strea ater was a spectacle which the most hardened practitioner could not have beheld without much compassion Colbert ithout doubt, veryBernouin to attend to the dyingabout with a ave nobility to his vulgar head, his shoulders thrown up, his neck stretched out, his lips half open, to give vent to unconnected frage to the pitch of the undertaking contemplated, whilst within ten paces of hi stifled by anguish which drew fro no more of the treasures of the earth, or of the joys of Paradise, but -hot napkins, physic, revulsives, and Guenaud, as recalled, were perfor his great head in both his hands, to coendered by the brain, wasthe 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 stienius of this thinker with the bushy eyebroas 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