The intendant, overcome with delight, for he feared he should be dismissed, refused this unprecedented honor.
"Does he accept?" said Aramis.
"No, he remains standing."
"Let us listen, then." And the future king and the future pope listened eagerly to the simple 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.