Ten Years Later by Dumas, Alexandre. Part one

sum! I possess nothing. I am no more king of France than you

are king of England. I am a name, a cipher dressed in

fleur-de-lised velvet, — that is all. I am upon a visible

throne; that is my only advantage over your majesty. I have

nothing — I can do nothing.”

“Can it be so?” exclaimed Charles II.

“My brother,” said Louis, sinking his voice, “I have

undergone miseries with which my poorest gentlemen are

unacquainted. If my poor Laporte were here, he would tell

you that I have slept in ragged sheets, through the holes of

which my legs have passed; he would tell you that

afterwards, when I asked for carriages, they brought me

conveyances half-destroyed by the rats of the coach-houses;

he would tell you that when I asked for my dinner, the

servants went to the cardinal’s kitchen to inquire if there

were any dinner for the king. And look! to-day, this very

day even, when I am twenty-two years of age, — to-day, when

I have attained the grade of the majority of kings, —

to-day, when I ought to have the key of the treasury, the

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Dumas, Alexandre – Ten Years Later

direction of the policy, the supremacy in peace and war, —

cast your eyes around me, see how I am left! Look at this

abandonment — this disdain — this silence! — Whilst

yonder — look yonder! View the bustle, the lights, the

homage! There! — there you see the real king of France, my

brother!

“In the cardinal’s apartments?”

“Yes, in the cardinal’s apartments.”

“Then I am condemned, sire?”

Louis XIV. made no reply.

“Condemned is the word; for I will never solicit him who

left my mother and sister to die with cold and hunger — the

daughter and grand-daughter of Henry IV. — if M. de Retz

and the parliament had not sent them wood and bread.”

“To die?” murmured Louis XIV.

“Well!” continued the king of England, “poor Charles II.,

grandson of Henry IV. as you are, sire, having neither

parliament nor Cardinal de Retz to apply to, will die of

hunger, as his mother and sister had nearly done.”

Louis knitted his brow, and twisted violently the lace of

his ruffles.

This prostration, this immobility, serving as a mark to an

emotion so visible, struck Charles II., and he took the

young man’s hand.

“Thanks!” said he, “my brother. You pity me, and that is all

I can require of you in your present situation.”

“Sire,” said Louis XIV., with a sudden impulse, and raising

his head, “it is a million you require, or two hundred

gentlemen, I think you say?”

“Sire, a million would be quite sufficient.”

“That is very little.”

“Offered to a single man it is a great deal. Convictions

have been purchased at a much lower price; and I should have

nothing to do but with venalities.”

“Two hundred gentlemen! Reflect! — that is little more than

a single company.”

“Sire, there is in our family a tradition, and that is, that

four men, four French gentlemen, devoted to my father, were

near saving my father, though condemned by a parliament,

guarded by an army and surrounded by a nation.”

“Then if I can procure you a million, or two hundred

gentlemen, you will be satisfied; and you will consider me

your well-affectioned brother?”

“I shall consider you as my saviour; and if I recover the

throne of my father, England will be, as long as I reign at

least, a sister to France, as you will have been a brother

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Dumas, Alexandre – Ten Years Later

to me.”

“Well, my brother,” said Louis, rising, “what you hesitate

to ask for, I will myself demand; that which I have never

done on my own account, I will do on yours. I will go and

find the king of France — the other — the rich, the

powerful one, I mean. I will myself solicit this million, or

these two hundred gentlemen; and — we will see.”

“Oh!” cried Charles, “you are a noble friend, sire — a

heart created by God! You save me, my brother; and if you

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