Ten Years Later by Dumas, Alexandre. Part one

of it, that the entree of King Louis XIV. into the city of

Blois had been noisy and brilliant his young majesty had

therefore appeared perfectly satisfied with it.

On arriving beneath the porch of the Castle of the States,

the king met, surrounded by his guards and gentlemen, with

S. A. R. the duke, Gaston of Orleans, whose physiognomy,

naturally rather majestic, had borrowed on this solemn

occasion a fresh luster and a fresh dignity. On her part,

Madame, dressed in her robes of ceremony, awaited, in the

interior balcony, the entrance of her nephew. All the

windows of the old castle, so deserted and dismal on

ordinary days, were resplendent with ladies and lights.

It was then to the sound of drums, trumpets, and vivats,

that the young king crossed the threshold of that castle in

which, seventy-two years before, Henry III. had called in

the aid of assassination and treachery to keep upon his head

and in his house a crown which was already slipping from his

brow, to fall into another family.

All eyes, after having admired the young king, so handsome

and so agreeable, sought for that other king of France, much

otherwise king than the former, and so old, so pale, so

bent, that people called him the Cardinal Mazarin.

Louis was at this time endowed with all the natural gifts

which make the perfect gentleman; his eye was brilliant,

mild, and of a clear azure blue. But the most skillful

physiognomists, those divers into the soul, on fixing their

looks upon it, if it had been possible for a subject to

sustain the glance of the king, — the most skillful

physiognomists, we say, would never have been able to fathom

the depths of that abyss of mildness. It was with the eyes

of the king as with the immense depths of the azure heavens,

or with those more terrific, and almost as sublime, which

the Mediterranean reveals under the keels of its ships in a

clear summer day, a gigantic mirror in which heaven delights

to reflect sometimes its stars, sometimes its storms.

The king was short of stature — he was scarcely five feet

two inches: but his youth made up for this defect, set off

likewise by great nobleness in all his movements, and by

considerable address in all bodily exercises.

Certes, he was already quite a king, and it was a great

thing to be a king in that period of traditional devotedness

and respect; but as, up to that time, he had been but seldom

and always poorly shown to the people, as they to whom he

was shown saw him by the side of his mother, a tall woman,

and monsieur le cardinal, a man of commanding presence, many

found him so little of a king as to say, —

“Why, the king is not so tall as monsieur le cardinal!”

Whatever may be thought of these physical observations,

which were principally made in the capital, the young king

was welcomed as a god by the inhabitants of Blois, and

almost like a king by his uncle and aunt, Monsieur and

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Dumas, Alexandre – Ten Years Later

Madame, the inhabitants of the castle.

It must, however, be allowed, that when he saw, in the hall

of reception, chairs of equal height placed for himself, his

mother, the cardinal, and his uncle and aunt, a disposition

artfully concealed by the semicircular form of the assembly,

Louis XIV. became red with anger, and looked around him to

ascertain by the countenances of those that were present, if

this humiliation had been prepared for him. But as he saw

nothing upon the impassible visage of the cardinal, nothing

on that of his mother, nothing on those of the assembly, he

resigned himself, and sat down, taking care to be seated

before anybody else.

The gentlemen and ladies were presented to their majesties

and monsieur le cardinal.

The king remarked that his mother and he scarcely knew the

names of any of the persons who were presented to them;

whilst the cardinal, on the contrary never failed, with an

admirable memory and presence of mind, to talk to every one

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