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 CHAPTER V

THE USHER OF THE BLACK ROD

For the courtiers of Louis le Grand there was no such thing as hunger or thirst, want of appetite, heat, cold, lassitude, depression, or fatigue. If he chose they should accompany him on long journeys, in crowded carriages, over bad roads, they were expected, nevertheless, to appear fresh, well-dressed, exuberant in spirits, inclined to eat or content to starve, unconscious of sun and wind; above all, ready to agree with his Majesty upon every subject at a moment's notice. Ladies enjoyed in this respect no advantage over gentlemen. Though a fair amazon had been hunting the stag all day, she would be required to appear just the same in grand Court toilet at night; to take her place at lansquenet; to be present at the royal concerts, twenty fiddles playing a heavy opera of Cavalli right through; or, perhaps, only to assist in lining the great gallery, which the king traversed on his way to supper. Everything must yield to the lightest whim of royalty, and no more characteristic reply was ever made to the arbitrary descendant of St. Louis than that of the eccentric Cardinal Bonzi, to whom the king complained one day at dinner that he had no teeth. "Teeth, sire!" replied the astute churchman, showing, while he spoke, a strong, even well-polished row of his own. "Why, who has any teeth?"

His Majesty, however, like mortals of inferior rank, did not touch on the accomplishment of his seventy-seventh year without sustaining many of the complaints and inconveniences of old age. For some time past not only had his teeth failed, but his digestion, despite of the regimen of iced