“To make restitution!” cried Mazarin, with great warmth.

“Eh! I do not say no.”

“What, of all! You do not dream of such a thing! You speak just as the confessor did.”

“To make restitution of a part, — that is to say, his majesty’s part; and that, monseigneur, may have its dangers. Your eminence is too skillful a politician not to know that, at this moment, the king does not possess a hundred and fifty thousand livres clear in his coffers.”

“That is not my affair,” said Mazarin, triumphantly; “that belongs to M. le Surintendant Fouquet, whose accounts I gave you to verify some months ago.”

Colbert bit his lips at the name of Fouquet.