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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