“Because,” replied the father, “to absolve you for that motive would be a sin for which the king would never absolve me, my lord.”
Thereupon the confessor quitted his penitent with an air full of compunction. He then went out in the same manner he had entered.
“Oh, good God!” groaned the cardinal. “Come here, Colbert, I am very, very ill indeed, my friend.”
Chapter XLVI. The Donation.
Colbert reappeared beneath the curtains.
“Have you heard?” said Mazarin.
“Alas! yes, my lord.”
“Can he be right? Can all this money be badly acquired?”
“A Theatin, monseigneur, is a bad judge in matters of finance,” replied Colbert, coolly. “And yet it is very possible that, according to his theological views, your eminence has been, in a certain degree, in the wrong. People generally find they have been so,—when they die.”
“In the first place, they commit the wrong of dying, Colbert.”