makes the greatest princes should be measured by the ell of Versailles!  And, nevertheless, there is room to fear this misfortune.  For my part, I confess to your Majesty that, notwithstanding the repugnance you feel to increase the cash-orders [comptants], if I could have foreseen that this expenditure would be so large, I should have advised the employment of cash-orders, in order to hide the knowledge thereof forever.” [The cash-orders (ordonnances au comptant) did not indicate their object, and were not revised.  The king merely wrote, Pay cash; I know the object of this expenditure (Bon au comptant:  je sais l’objet de cette depense).]

[Illustration:  Versailles—–­526]

Colbert was mistaken in his fears for Louis XIV.’s glory; if the expenses of Versailles surpassed his most gloomy apprehensions, the palace which rose upon the site of Louis XIV.’s former hunting-box was worthy of the king who had made it in his own image, and who managed to retain all his court around him there, by the mere fact of his will and of his royal presence.

Colbert was dead before Versailles was completed; the bills amounted then to one hundred and sixteen millions; the castle of Marly, now destroyed, cost more than four millions; money was everywhere becoming scarce; the temper of the comptroller of finances went on getting worse.  “Whereas formerly it had been noticed that he set to his work rubbing his hands with joy,” says his secretary Perrault, brother of the celebrated architect, “he no longer worked but with an air of vexation, and even with sighs.  From the good-natured and easy-going creature he had been, he became difficult to deal with, and there was not so much business, by a great deal, got through as in the early years of his administration.”  “I do not mean to build any more, Mansard; I meet with too many mortifications,” the king would say to his favorite architect.  He still went on building, however; but he quarrelled with Colbert over the cost of the great railings of Versailles.  There’s swindling here,” said Louis XIV.  “Sir,” rejoined Colbert, “I flatter myself, at any rate, that that word does not apply to me?” “No,” said the king; “but more attention should have been shown.  If you want to know what economy is, go to Flanders; you will see how little those fortifications of the conquered places cost.”

It was Vauban whose praise the king thus sang, and Vauban, devoted to Louvois, had for a long time past been embroiled with Colbert.  The minister felt himself beaten in the contest he had so long maintained against Michael Le Tellier and his son.  In 1664, at the death of Chancellor Seguier, Colbert had opposed the elevation of Le Tellier to this office, “telling the king that, if he came in, he, Colbert, could not serve his Majesty, as he would have him thwarting everything he wanted to do.”  On leaving the council, Le Tellier said to Brienne, “You see what a tone M. Colbert takes up; he will have to be settled