Page:The Vicomte de Bragelonne 2.djvu/310

 pamphleteers have reproached the most brilliant mind of the present age."

"You are right, Colbert, you are right; go, and seek the king, on my part, and carry him my will."

"Your donation, monseigneur."

"But if he should accept it? If he should even think of accepting it?"

"Then there would remain thirteen millions for your family, and that is a good round sum."

"But then you would be either a fool or a traitor."

"And I am neither the one nor the other, monseigneur. You appear to be much afraid the king will accept; you have a deal more reason to fear that he will not accept.

"But, see you, if he does not accept, I should like to guarantee my thirteen reserved millions to him — yes, I will do so — yes. But my pains are returning! I shall faint! I am very, very ill, Colbert; I am very near my end!"

Colbert started. The cardinal was indeed very ill; large drops of sweat flowed down upon his bed of agony, and the frightful paleness of a face streaming with water was a spectacle which the most hardened practitioner could not have beheld without compassion. Colbert was, without doubt, very much affected, for he quitted the chamber, calling Bernouin to attend the dying man, and went into the corridor. There, walking about with a meditative ex- pression, which almost gave nobleness to his vulgar head, his shoulders thrown up, his neck stretched out, his lips half open, to give vent to unconnected fragments of in- coherent thoughts, he lashed up his courage to the pitch of the undertaking contemplated, while within ten paces of him, separated only by a Avail, his master was being stifled by anguish which drew from him lamentable cries, think- ing no more of the treasures of the earth, or of the joys of Paradise, but much of all the horrors of hell. "While burn- ing-hot napkins, topicals, revulsives, and Guenaud, who was recalled, were performing their functions with increased activity, Colbert, holding his great head in both his hands, to compress within it the fever of the projects engendered by the brain, was meditating the tenor of the donation he would make Mazarin write at the first hour of respite his disease should afford him. It would appear as if all the cries of the cardinal, and all the attacks of death upon this representative of the past, were stimulants for the genius of this thinker with the bushy eyebrows, who was turning already toward the rising of the new sun of a regenerated