Page:The Vicomte de Bragelonne 2.djvu/298

286 thirteen years older than Louis XIV., his future master, Of middle height, rather thin than otherwise, he had deep-set eyes, a mean appearance, coarse black and thin hair, which, say the biographers of his time, made him take early to the calotte. A look of severity, of harshness even, a sort of stiffness, which, with inferiors, was pride, with superiors, an affectation of superior virtue; a surly cast of countenance upon all occasions, even when looking at himself in a glass alone—such is the exterior of the personage. As to the moral part of his character, the depth of his talent for accounts, and his ingenuity in making sterility itself productive, were much boasted of. Colbert had formed the idea of forcing governors of frontier places to feed the garrisons without pay with what they drew from contributions. Such a valuable quality made Mazarin think of replacing Joubert, his intendant, who was recently dead, by M. Colbert, who had such skill in nibbling down allowances. Colbert by degrees crept into the court, notwithstanding the meanness of his birth, for he was the son of a man who sold wine, as his father had done, but who afterward sold cloth, and then silk stuffs. Colbert, destined for trade, had been a clerk to a merchant at Lyons, whom he had quitted to come to Paris in the office of a Chatelet procureur named Biterne. It was here he learned the art of drawing up an account, and the much more valuable one of complicating it. This stiffness of Colbert's had been of great benefit to him; so true is it that Fortune, when she has a caprice, resembles those women of antiquity whose fantasy nothing physical or moral, in either things or men, disgusted. Colbert, placed with Michel Letellier, Secretary of State, in 1648, by his cousin Colbert, Seigneur de St. Penange, who favored him, received one day from the minister a commission for Cardinal Mazarin. His eminence was then in the enjoyment of flourishing health, and the bad years of the Fronde had not yet counted triple and quad- ruple for him. He was at Sedan, very much annoyed at a court intrigue in which Anne of Austria appeared to wish to desert his cause. Of this intrigue Letellier held the thread. He had just received a letter from Anne of Austria, a letter very valuable to him, and strongly compromising Mazarin; but, as he already played the double part which served him so well, and by which he always managed two enemies so as to draw advantage from both, either by imbroiling them more and more or by reconciling them, Michel Letellier wished to send Anne of Austria's letter