“Thank him, sire——”
“Ah!” said the queen.
“But do not accept,” continued Fouquet.
“And why not?” asked the queen.
“You have yourself said why, madame,” replied Fouquet; “because kings cannot and ought not to receive presents from their subjects.”
The king remained silent between these two contrary opinions.
“But forty millions!” said Anne of Austria, in the same tone as that in which, at a later period, poor Marie Antoinette replied, “You will tell me as much!”
“I know,” said Fouquet, laughing, “forty millions makes a good round sum,—such a sum as could almost tempt a royal conscience.”
“But monsieur,” said Anne of Austria, “instead of persuading the king not to receive this present, recall to his majesty’s mind, you, whose duty it is, that these forty millions are a fortune to him.”
“It is precisely, madame, because these forty millions would be a fortune that I will say to the king, ‘Sire, if it be not decent for a king to accept from a subject six horses, worth twenty thousand livres, it would be disgraceful for him to owe a fortune to another subject, more or less scrupulous in the choice of the materials which contributed to the building up of that fortune.’”