Page:Dumas - Tales of Strange adventure (Methuen, 1907).djvu/26

14 now, favoured mortal that he was, the sole premonition of old age he experienced was an increasing sensation of fatigue, which the physicians told him was a warning to prepare for old age.

Sometimes at those famous Choisy suppers, where the tables rose ready furnished through the floor, where the waiting was done by the pages of the private household, where the Comtesse du Barry challenged the King with naughty innuendos, the Duc d'Ayen strove to rouse him with his great laugh, and the bon-vivant Marquis de Chauvelin plied him with dainty raillery, Louis XV. would be surprised to find his hand slack to lift the glass of the sparkling wine he had once loved so well, his brow loth to pucker in that inextinguishable laughter which the sallies of Jeanne Vaubernier had of old evoked, Autumn flowers of merriment on the frontiers of his prime. His brain remained obstinately cold to the seductive pictures of life and love and pleasure within reach of the happy possessors of sovereign power, unlimited wealth and excellent health.

Louis XV. was not of an open disposition; he was one who brooded over joy and sorrow. It may be, thanks to this self-concentration, he would have made a great Politician, if as he used to say himself, he had ever had the time. No sooner therefore did he observe the change that was beginning in him than, instead of making up his mind and inhaling philosophically these first breezes of old age that furrow the brow and whiten the hair, he turned his thoughts inwards and began to note his own symptoms.

This is a thing to make the most lighthearted of men dismal, this analysis of joy and grief; analysis is a silence interposed between laughter and weeping. Till then the King had only been bored, now he was a prey to positive melancholy. He had ceased to laugh at Madame du Barry's broad jokes, he could not raise a smile at the Due d'Ayen's wicked stories, he was unmoved at the most friendly advances of Monsieur de Chauvelin, his bosom friend, the fidus Achates of his Royal escapades. Madame du Barry felt particularly aggrieved at this mournful attitude, which expressed itself by an especial coldness towards her.

The change set the doctors talking, and they declared that if the King were not already ill, he was certainly on the road to be so.

Accordingly, on the 15th of the preceding April, Lamartinière, First Surgeon to the King, after administering to his Majesty his monthly dose of medicine, had ventured to make certain observations which he deemed highly necessary.

"Sire," the worthy Lamartinière had asked him, "Your Majesty having left off drinking, and eating, and . . . . amusing yourself, what does your Majesty propose to do?"

"Why, bless me, my good sir," the Monarch had replied, "whatever I may find most diverting, outside all these pastimes."

"The truth is I do not know much in the way of novelty to offer your Majesty. Your Majesty has made war, your Majesty has tried patronising learned men and artists, your Majesty has loved women and champagne. Now, when a man has already tasted glory, flattery, love and wine, I protest to your Majesty that I search in vain for a muscle, a tissue, a nervous ganglion displaying the existence of any further aptitude for any fresh distraction."

"Ah! really," cried the King, "you really believe that, Lamartinière?"

"Sire, just think; Sardanapalus was a king of great intelligence, almost as great as your Majesty, albeit he lived something like two thousand eight hundred years ago. He loved life and pondered deeply on how to use it to the best advantage. I seem to have heard that he made minute investigations as to the means of so exercising body and mind as to lead to the discovery of new pleasures the least suspected. Well, I have never read in history that he discovered one single gratification you have not found out yourself."

"Alas, yes! Lamartinière."

"I make one exception. Sire—in favour of champagne, a wine which Sardanapalus did not know. On the contrary his beverage was the thick, heavy, sticky wines of Asia Minor, liquid flames that ooze from the pulp of the Greek grapes, wines that intoxicate to mad frenzy, while champagne produces but a gay insanity."

"True, my dear Lamartinière, very true; the wine of Champagne is a pretty wine, and I have loved it well. But tell me, did he not end by burning himself