The palace stood alone, its dependencies grouped about it with a space between. The front court and approach were deserted; but in the grounds behind groups had formed: knots of courtiers were discussing some coming thing, and all the life of the monarchy was disturbed in that fine spring leisure, both in the great rooms of the palace and in the gardens. Twelve pavilions or lodges stood in formal order round behind the main building, the lawns between. They were habitations for men and women favoured of the king. Before one of these stood a man whose long acquaintance with affairs on the one hand, with the Court upon the other, had not quite rid him of awkwardness; for he remembered his humble birth. It was Desmarets, the Controller of Finance, a man of fifty. By his side, of equal age, stood, simply dressed, demure, but a little sullen, a stout figure, odd in such surroundings--Bernard the Jew. One or two others talked to him, some commonplaces or other, as they thus stood before the pavilion. It looked like a chance group; yet it was designed. And why it was designed one must go back some weeks, some months, to understand. * * * * * Desmarets, coming back to the control of Louis XIV.’s finance in the winter before that spring, in the February, knew not which way to turn for monies in the conduct of the war. He bethought him of one who had become the richest man in Europe--Bernard the Banker. He knew his task to be difficult: the credit of the king was bad, the war was a bottomless pit, swallowing million after million, the security of the taxes was exhausted; he also knew Bernard by repute: that repute was not in favour of the task. Bernard was a man notoriously cold in judgment--and notoriously right. So it was that he had built up his immense wealth. He had been born the son of an artist, an etcher and engraver, indifferent to anything but his art. He had been born the son of one of those Jewish men of talent, whose every mark it is to concentrate wholly upon the business of their lives, without concern for wealth, or even (very much) for fame. From such a beginning, young in such surroundings, Samuel Bernard the younger had re-acted toward a patient accumulation of gold. His art, his task, had been that. Amply had he succeeded; but when Desmarets approached him in the desperate crisis of that year, not a gold piece was forthcoming. In those days men were free, and the rulers of a state could not ruin them for a whim--even a whim of war. How, then, was Bernard to be persuaded? Desmarets had seen the king, and what followed here at Marly was the fruit of what the king had heard. Desmarets had told the king that not a gold piece was forthcoming.