Page:The Vicomte de Bragelonne 2.djvu/297

Rh "That ends it!" murmured the cardinal: "that ends it!" And he threw a melancholy look upon the riches which surrounded him. "And must I quit all that?" sighed he* "I am dying, Guenaud! I am dying!"

"Oh! not yet, monseigneur," said the physician.

Mazariu seized his hand. "In what time?" asked he, fixing his two large eyes upon the impassible countenance of the physician.

"Monseigneur, we never tell that."

"To ordinary men, perhaps not; but to me—to me, whose every minute is worth a treasure. Tell me, Guenaud, tell me!"

"No, no, monseigneur."

"I insist upon it, I tell you. Oh! give me a month, and for every one of those thirty days I will pay you a hundred thousand livres."

"Monseigneur," replied Guenaud, in a firm voice, "it is God who can give you days of grace, and not I. God only allows you a fortnight."

The cardinal breathed a painful sigh, and sank back upon his pillow, murmuring, "Thank you, Guenaud, thank you!"

The physician was about to depart; the dying man raised himself up: "Silence!" said he, with eyes of flame, "silence!"

"Monseigneur, I have known this secret" two months; you see that I have kept it faithfully."

"Go, Guenaud; I will take care of your fortunes; go, and tell Brienne to send me a clerk called Monsieur Colbert. Go!"

was not far off. During the whole evening he had remained in one of the corridors, chatting with Ber- nouin and Brienne, and commenting, with the ordinary skill of people of a court, upon the views which develop themselves, like air-bubbles upon the water, on the surface of each event. It is doubtless time to trace, in a few words, one of the most interesting portraits of the age, and to trace it with as much truth, perhaps, as contemporary painters have been able to do. Colbert was a man in whom the historian and the moralist have an equal right. He was