“In consequence of the word of order of which you spoke to me so ingeniously just now, dear M. Colbert; the king told me to take a quarter of the pension he is pleased to make me.”
“Of me?” said Colbert.
“Not exactly. The king said to me: ‘Go to M. Fouquet; the superintendent will, perhaps, have no money, then you will go and draw it of M. Colbert.’”
The countenance of M. Colbert brightened for a moment; but it was with his unfortunate physiognomy as with a stormy sky, sometimes radiant, sometimes dark as night, according as the lightning gleams or the cloud passes. “Eh! and was there any money in the superintendent’s coffers?” asked he.
“Why, yes, he could not be badly off for money,” replied D’Artagnan—“it may be believed, since M. Fouquet, instead of paying me a quarter or five thousand livres——”
“A quarter or five thousand livres!” cried Colbert, struck, as Fouquet had been, with the generosity of the sum for a soldier’s pension, “why, that would be a pension of twenty thousand livres?”
“Exactly, M. Colbert. Peste! you reckon like old Pythagoras; yes, twenty thousand livres.”
“Ten times the appointment of an intendant of the finances. I beg to offer you my compliments,” said Colbert, with a vicious smile.
“Oh!” said D’Artagnan, “the king apologized for giving me so little; but he promised to make it more hereafter, when he should be rich; but I must be gone, having much to do——”
“So, then, notwithstanding the expectation of the king, the superintendent paid you, did he?”