“Do you mean to say he has the presumption to hope to pass from intendant to superintendent?”
“Have you not yourself already had the same fear?”
“Oh! oh!” said Fouquet, “to succeed with Madame Vanel is one thing, to succeed me with the king is another. France is not to be purchased so easily as the wife of a maitre des comptes.”
“Eh! monsieur, everything is to be bought; if not by gold, by intrigue.”
“Nobody knows to the contrary better than you, madame, you to whom I have offered millions.”
“Instead of millions, Fouquet, you should have offered me a true, only and boundless love: I might have accepted that. So you see, still, everything is to be bought, if not in one way, by another.”
“So, Colbert, in your opinion, is in a fair way of bargaining for my place of superintendent. Make yourself easy on that head, my dear marquise; he is not yet rich enough to purchase it.”
“But if he should rob you of it?”
“Ah! that is another thing. Unfortunately, before he can reach me, that is to say, the body of the place, he must destroy, must make a breach in the advanced works, and I am devilishly well fortified, marquise.”
“What you call your advanced works are your creatures, are they not—your friends?”