“I will take with me, madame,” he said, “two orders for the amount agreed upon, payable at my treasury.

Will that satisfy you?”

“Would that the orders on your treasury were for two millions, monsieur l’intendant! I shall have the pleasure of showing you the way, then?”

“Allow me to order my carriage?”

“I have a carriage below, monsieur.”

Colbert coughed like an irresolute man. He imagined, for a moment, that the proposition of the duchesse was a snare; that perhaps some one was waiting at the door; and that she whose secret had just been sold to Colbert for a hundred thousand crowns, had already offered it to Fouquet