“Louis is every inch a King. Your easy-tempered gentleman at Whitehall is only a tradition,” answered De Malfort. “He is but an extravagantly paid official, whose office is a sinecure, and who sells something of his prerogative every session for a new grant of money. I dare adventure, by the end of his reign, Charles will have done more than Cromwell to increase the liberty of the subject and to demonstrate the insignificance of kings.” “I doubt the easy-tempered sinecurist who trusts the business of the State to the nation’s representatives will wear longer than your officious tyrant, who wants to hold all the strings in his own fingers.” “He may do that safely, so long as he has men like Colbert for puppets——” “Men!” cried Fareham. “A man of so rare an honesty must not be thought of in the plural. Colbert’s talent, probity, and honour constitute a phoenix that appears once in a century; and, given those rare qualities in the man, it needs a Richelieu to inspire the minister, and a Mazarin to teach him his craft, and to prepare him for double-dealing in others which his own direct mind could never have imagined. Trained first by one of the greatest, and next by one of the subtlest statesmen the world has ever seen, the provincial woollen-draper’s son has all the qualities needed to raise France to the pinnacle of fortune, if his master will but give him a free hand.” “At any rate, he will make Jacques Bonhomme pay handsomely for his Majesty’s new palaces and new loves,” said De Malfort. “Colbert adores the King, and is blind to his follies, which are no more economical than the vulgar pleasures of your jovial Rowley.” “Who takes four shillings in every country gentleman’s pound to spend on the pleasures of London,” interjected Masaroon. “Royalty is plaguey expensive.” The company sighed a melancholy assent. “And one can never tell whether the money they squeeze out of us goes to build a new ship, or to pay Lady Castlemaine’s gambling debts,” said Lady Sarah. “Oh, no doubt the lady, as Hyde calls her, has her tithes,” said De Malfort. “I have observed she always flames in new jewels after a subsidy.” “Royal accounts should be kept so that every tax-payer could look into them,” said Masaroon. “The King has spent millions. We were all so foolishly fond of him in the joyful day of his restoration that we allowed him to wallow in extravagance, and asked no questions; and for a man who had worn threadbare velvet and tarnished gold, and lived upon loans and gratuities from foreign princes and particulars, it was a new sensation to draw _ad libitum_ upon a national exchequer.” “The exchequer Rowley draws upon should be as deep and wide as the river Pactolus; for he is a spendthrift by instinct,” said Fareham.