Page:Ten Years Later.djvu/262

250 {{c|{{larger|CHAPTER XXXV.}}

{{c|FONTAINEBLEAU.}}

{[sc|For}} four days every kind of enchantment brought together in the magnificent gardens of Fontainebleau had converted this spot into a place of the most perfect enjoyment. M. Colbert seemed gifted with ubiquity. In the morning there were the accounts of the previous night's expenses to settle; during the day, programmes, essays, enlistments, payments. M. Colbert had amassed four millions of francs, and dispersed them with a prudent economy. He was horrified at the expenses which mythology involved; every wood-nymph, every dryad did not cost less than a hundred francs a day. The dress alone amounted to three hundred francs. The expense of powder and sulphur for fireworks amounted, every night, to a hundred thousand francs. In addition to these, the illuminations on the borders of the sheet of water cost thirty thousand francs every evening. The fêtes had been magnificent, and Colbert could not restrain his delight. From time to time he noticed madame and the king setting forth on hunting expeditions, or preparing for the reception of different fantastic personages, solemn ceremonials, which had been extemporized a fortnight before, and in which madame's sparkling wit and the king's magnificence were equally displayed.

For madame, the heroine of the fête, replied to the addresses of the deputations from unknown races — Garamanths, Scythians, Hyperboreans, Caucasians, and Patagonians, who seemed to issue from the ground, for the purpose of approaching her with their congratulations; and upon every representative of these races the king bestowed a diamond or some other article of great value. Then the deputies, in verses more or less amusing, compared the king to the sun, madame to Phoebe, the sun's sister, and the queen and Monsieur were no more spoken of than if the king had married Mme. Henrietta of England, and not Maria Theresa of Austria. The happy pair, hand in hand, imperceptibly pressing each other's fingers, drank in deep draughts the sweet beverage of adulation, by which the attractions of youth, beauty, power, and love are enhanced. Every one at Fontainebleau was amazed at the extent of the influence which madame had so rapidly acquired over the king, and whispered among themselves that madame was, in point of fact, the true queen and, in effect, the