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"Such a presumptuous snake-in-the-grass," Abbot Melani mut­tered to himself before the emblem of the
Coluber
which so unex­pectedly confronted him.

At that moment, Atto heard in the corridor the bustle of rapidly approaching footsteps. He took the envelope, adjusted his jacket in order to conceal as well as possible the bulge created by the parcel and held his breath, hidden behind an arras, while he heard a man arrive before the study door. Someone opened that door and said, turning to the others, "He will already have gone in."

Colbert's servants, not having heard Abbot Melani enter the dy­ing man's sickroom, had begun to search for him. The door closed again, the servant returned whence he had come. Abbot Melani left in complete silence and moved without haste towards the main en­trance. Here he greeted a valet with an easy smile: "He will soon be better," said he, looking him straight in the eye as he went through the door.

In the days that followed, no word reached him of the disappear­ance of any folder, and the abbot was able to peruse it at his ease.

"Pardon me, Signor Atto," I interrupted him, "but how did you understand which was the right point of the paper to insert into the joint?"

"Simple: all the paper stars that had already been used had traces of grease at exactly the same place. It had been a gross error on the Serpent's part to leave it there. Clearly, his senses had begun to grow dull of late."

"And why did the secret drawer not open at once?"

"Stupidly, I had thought it was a crude mechanism," sighed Atto, "which would be activated as soon as one touched the end of the aperture with the right key: in other words, with the point of the pa­per inserted at the right angle. But I had underestimated the French cabinet-makers' skill in inventing ever more remarkable devices. In reality (and here was why it was so important to use superior materi­als like those leaves of exquisitely fashioned paper) the mechanism was complex and involved many highly sensitive metal parts not situ­ated directly behind the opening but at one remove from there, and only a slow stroking of both sides could activate all the parts in per­fect succession."

I remained silent, lost in admiration.

"I should have understood at once," concluded Atto with a grim­ace. "The used stars were blackened not precisely at the tip but along both sides."

His instinct had not deceived him: into his hands had fallen one of the most extraordinary finds. Inside the envelope stamped with the face of the Serpent (and he emphasised the word) was a letter in Latin sent from Rome by someone unknown to Melani but whom he understood by his style and from other details to be certainly a cleric. The paper had grown yellow and seemed to date from many years previously. The missives referred to confidential information which the same informer had sent previously to the addressee. The latter, as was to be understood from the envelope, was the Superintendent General of Finances, Nicolas Fouquet.

"And why was this in Colbert's possession?"

"I have already told you, as you will recall, that at the time of his arrest and in the days that followed, all Fouquet's papers and correspondence, both private and relating to matters of state, were confiscated."

The language of the mysterious prelate was so cryptic that Melani was unable even to understand what might be the nature of the se­cret to which it alluded. He noted, amongst other things, that one of the epistles began curiously with the words
mumiarum domino
, but was unable to find any explanation for this.

But the most interesting part of Abbot Melani's tale was still to come, and here the material took on the contours of the incredible. The folder which Atto had found on top of the lectern contained very recent correspondence with which, because of his illness, Colbert had not yet been able to deal. Apart from a few matters of no impor­tance, there were two letters sent from Rome in July and almost cer­tainly (as appeared from the obsequious turns of phrase employed) destined for Colbert in person. The sender must have been a trusted servant of the minister, and he reported the presence in the city of the squirrel on the
arbor caritatis.

"Meaning..."

"Elementary. The squirrel is the animal on Fouquet's coat of arms; the
arbor caritatis,
the tree of charity, can only be the city of lov­ing kindness, that is, Rome. And indeed, according to the informer, the former Superintendent Fouquet had been seen and followed no fewer than three times: near a piazza called Fiammetta, in the vicin­ity of the church of Sant'Apollinare and in the Piazza Navona. Three places, if I am not mistaken, in the Holy City."

"But that is not possible," I objected. "Did not Fouquet die in prison, at..."

"At Pinerol, of course, a good three years ago, and in the arms of his son who at that extreme hour was generously granted access to him. Yet the letter from Colbert's informer, although written in cipher, spoke to me clearly: he was here in Rome little more than a month ago."

The abbot decided to leave at once for Rome in order to solve the mystery. There were two possibilities: either the news of Fouquet's presence in Rome was true (and that would have been beyond any­thing that could have been imagined, since it was common knowledge that the Superintendent had died following a long illness after al­most twenty years' imprisonment in a fortress); or it was false, and then it would be necessary to discover whether someone, perhaps an unfaithful agent, was distributing false rumours with a view to disturbing the King and the court and comforting the enemies of France.

Once again I noticed how, when telling of such secrets and sur­prising events, Abbot Melani's eyes lit up with a twinkle of malicious joy, of private satisfaction and unspoken pleasure in recounting these things to someone like myself, a poor apprentice utterly ignorant of intrigues, plots and secret affairs of state.

"Did Colbert die?"

"No doubt, seeing the condition he was in; even if not before my departure."

In fact, as I learned far later, Colbert died on the 6th of Septem­ber, exactly a week before Abbot Melani told me of his intrusion.

"In the eyes of the world, he will have died a victor," added Atto after a pause, "immensely wealthy and powerful. For his family, he bought the finest noble titles and high offices: his brother Charles became Marquis de Croissy and Secretary of State for Foreign Af­fairs; another brother, Edouard-Francois, was created Marquis de Maulevrierand became Lieutenant-General of the King's armies; his son Jean-Baptiste became Marquis de Seignelay, and Secretary of State for the Navy. Without counting all the other brothers and sons who made brilliant military and ecclesiastical careers, or the rich marriages contracted by his three daughters, all of whom became duchesses."

"But did Colbert not cry scandal, accusing Fouquet of being too rich and of having placed his men everywhere?"

"Yes, and then he himself engaged in the most blatant nepotism. He spun a network of his own spies such as there had never been, hunting down and ruining all the most loyal friends of the Superin­tendent."

I knew that Melani was also referring to his own exile from Paris.

"Not only that: Colbert had accumulated an estate of over ten million
livres
net, concerning the origins of which no one has ever expressed the slightest suspicions. My poor friend Nicolas, on the other hand, had contracted personal debts in order to provide funds for Mazarin and for the war against Spain."

"An astute man, your Signor di Colbert."

"And unscrupulous," added Melani. "All his life, he was praised to heaven for his vast reforms of the state which will, alas, guarantee him a place in history. Yet, all of us at court know perfectly well that every single reform was stolen from Fouquet: those to do with rev­enue and estates, the easing of the
taille,
tax relief, the great manu­factures, and the naval and colonial policies. It is no accident that he had all the Superintendent's papers burned very early on."

Fouquet, explained the abbot to me, was the first shipbuilder and coloniser of France, the first to take up Richelieu's old dream of making the Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Morbihan the centre of the economic and maritime renewal of the kingdom. It was he, already the organiser of the victorious war against Spain, who first discovered and organised the weavers of the village of Maincy, whom Colbert later transformed into the manufactory of the Gobelins.

"Besides, it was soon common knowledge that these reforms were not flour from his own sack. For a good twenty-two years Colbert was Comptroller-General, a more modest title with which he, to please the King, had renamed the office of Superintendent, which was offi­cially abolished. Fouquet, however, remained in government for eight years only. And here lay the problem: for as long as he was able to, the Serpent followed in the footsteps of his predecessor, and fortune smiled on him. But then he had to pursue on his own the reform plans which were confiscated from Fouquet at the time of his arrest. And from that point on, Colbert made one long series of false moves: in industrial and mercantile policy, where neither the nobility nor the bourgeoisie gave him credit, and in maritime policy, in which none of his much-vaunted companies were long-lived, and no one ever suc­ceeded in gaining supremacy over the English and the Dutch."

"And was the Most Christian King aware of nothing?"

"The King keeps his changes of judgement jealously to himself; but it seems that, no sooner had the physicians given Colbert up for lost than he began a round of consultations to choose a successor, taking a selection of names of ministers whose character and training were very different from that of Colbert. When this was pointed out to him, it is said that His Majesty replied: "That is precisely why I chose them."

"Did Colbert then die in disgrace?"

"Let us not exaggerate. I should say, rather, that the whole of his career as minister was afflicted by the King's continuous rages. Colbert and Louvois, the Minister for War, the two most feared intendants in France, were overcome with trembling and covered in cold sweat whenever the King summoned them in council. They en­joyed the Sovereign's confidence, but they were his two first slaves. Colbert must have realised very early on how difficult it was to take Fouquet's place and, like him, to meet every day the King's demands for money for battles and ballets."

"How did he manage?"

"In the most practical way. The
Coluber
began to channel into the hands of one man, the Sovereign, all the wealth which had hitherto been that of the few. He abolished countless offices and pensions, he despoiled Paris and the kingdom of every luxury and all ended up in the coffers of the Crown. As for the people, those who previously had gone hungry now died of hunger."

"Did Colbert ever become more powerful than Fouquet had been?"

"My boy, he was far, far more powerful. Never did my friend Nico­las enjoy the liberties from which his successor benefited. Colbert laid his hands on everything, everywhere, interfering in areas that had remained completely beyond the reach of Fouquet, who faced the added difficulty of almost always acting in wartime. And yet the debts which the Serpent left behind him were far greater than those for which Fouquet was arraigned for ruining the state, he who ruined himself for the state."

"Did no one ever bring accusations to bear against Colbert?"

"There were several scandals: such as the one and only case of the forgery of money in France during the past several hundred years, and all of those involved were the
Coluber'
s men, including his nephew. Or the stripping and illicit trafficking of Burgundy's timber; or the criminal exploitation of the forests of Normandy; and these both in­volved the same henchman of Colbert, Berryer, who had materially falsified documents in the Fouquet trial. All devices to amass wealth for his family."

"A fortunate life, then."

"That, I would not say. He spent his existence pretending to be of the most exemplary integrity, accumulating a fortune which he was never able to enjoy. He suffered from envy that was boundless and could never be allayed. He had always to sweat blood and tears in order to come up with some paltry idea which was not to be thrown away. A victim of his own mania for power, he arrogated to himself control over every area of the country, spending a lifetime chained to his desk. He never enjoyed himself for one single hour, and despite that he was detested by the people. Every single day he suffered the terrible wrath of the Sovereign. He was mocked and despised for his ignorance. And it was a combination of these last two factors that eventually killed him."

"What do you mean?"