thou! — inert statue, which has no other power than that of
provoking salutations from courtiers, when wilt thou be able
to raise thy velvet arm, or clench thy silken hand? when
wilt thou be able to open, for any purpose but to sigh, or
smile, lips condemned to the motionless stupidity of the
marbles in thy gallery?”
Then, passing his hand over his brow, and feeling the want
of air, he approached a window, and looking down, saw below
some horsemen talking together, and groups of timid
observers. These horsemen were a fraction of the watch: the
groups were busy portions of the people, to whom a king is
always a curious thing, the same as a rhinoceros, a
crocodile, or a serpent. He struck his brow with his open
hand, crying, — “King of France! what title! People of
France! what a heap of creatures! I have just returned to my
Louvre; my horses, just unharnessed, are still smoking, and
I have created interest enough to induce scarcely twenty
persons to look at me as I passed. Twenty! what do I say?
no; there were not twenty anxious to see the king of France.
There are not even ten archers to guard my place of
residence: archers, people, guards, all are at the Palais
Royal! Why, my good God! have not I, the king, the right to
ask of you all that?”
“Because,” said a voice, replying to his, and which sounded
from the other side of the door of the cabinet, “because at
the Palais Royal lies all the gold, — that is to say, all
the power of him who desires to reign.”
Louis turned sharply round. The voice which had pronounced
these words was that of Anne of Austria. The king started,
and advanced towards her. “I hope,” said he, “your majesty
has paid no attention to the vain declamations which the
solitude and disgust familiar to kings suggest to the
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happiest dispositions?”
“I only paid attention to one thing, my son, and that was,
that you were complaining.”
“Who! I? Not at all,” said Louis XIV.; “no, in truth, you
err, madame.”
“What were you doing, then?”
“I thought I was under the ferule of my professor, and
developing a subject of amplification.”
“My son,” replied Anne of Austria, shaking her head, “you
are wrong not to trust my word; you are wrong not to grant
me your confidence. A day will come, and perhaps quickly,
wherein you will have occasion to remember that axiom: —
`Gold is universal power; and they alone are kings who are
all-powerful.'”
“Your intention,” continued the king, “was not, however, to
cast blame upon the rich men of this age, was it?
“No,” said the queen, warmly; “no, sire; they who are rich
in this age, under your reign, are rich because you have
been willing they should be so, and I entertain against them
neither malice nor envy; they have, without doubt, served
your majesty sufficiently well for your majesty to have
permitted them to reward themselves. That is what I mean to
say by the words for which you reproach me.”
“God forbid, madame, that I should ever reproach my mother
with anything!”
“Besides,” continued Anne of Austria, “the Lord never gives
the goods of this world but for a season; the Lord — as
correctives to honor and riches — the Lord has placed
sufferings, sickness, and death; and no one,” added she,
with a melancholy smile, which proved she made the
application of the funeral precept to herself, “no man can
take his wealth or greatness with him to the grave. It
results, therefore, that the young gather the abundant
harvest prepared for them by the old.”
Louis listened with increased attention to the words which
Anne of Austria, no doubt, pronounced with a view to console
him. “Madame,” said he, looking earnestly at his mother,
“one would almost say in truth that you had something else
to announce to me.”
“I have absolutely nothing, my son; only you cannot have
failed to remark that his eminence the cardinal is very
ill.”
Louis looked at his mother, expecting some emotion in her