bat, upon the deep lines of his yellow forehead.

“No one,” he said.

“You surely will make an exception in your own favor, Monsieur Colbert?”

“In what way, madame?”

“I mean that, if you would take the trouble to accompany me to the place where the letters are, they would be delivered into your own hands, and you would be able to verify and check them.”

“Quite true.”

“You would bring the hundred thousand crowns with you at the same time, for I, too, do not trust any one.”

Colbert colored to the tips of his ears. Like all eminent men in the art of figures, he was of an insolent and mathematical probity.