"
"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.
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