"Impossible, my lord. Restitution! restitution!" replied the Theatin.
"But you absolve me from all other sins, why not from that?"
"Because," replied the father, "to absolve you for that motive would be a sin for which the king would never absolve me, my lord."
Thereupon the confessor quitted his penitent with an air full of compunction. He then went out in the same manner he had entered.
"Oh, good God!" groaned the cardinal. "Come here, Colbert, I am very, very ill indeed, my friend."
CHAPTER 46. The Donation
Colbert reappeared beneath the curtains.
"Have you heard?" said Mazarin.
"Alas! yes, my lord."
"Can he be right? Can all this money be badly acquired?"
"A Theatin, monseigneur, is a bad judge in matters of finance," replied Colbert, coolly. "And yet it is very possible that, according to his theological ideas, your eminence has been, in a certain degree, in the wrong. People generally find they have been so, -- when they die."
"In the first place, they commit the wrong of dying, Colbert."
"That is true, my lord. Against whom, however, did the Theatin make out that you had committed these wrongs? Against the king?!"
Mazarin shrugged his shoulders. "As if I had not saved both his state and his finances."
"That admits of no contradiction, my lord."
"Does it? Then I have received a merely legitimate salary, in spite of the opinion of my confessor?"
"That is beyond doubt."
"And I might fairly keep for my own family, which is so needy, a good