Page:The Vicomte de Bragelonne 2.djvu/312

Rh 300 THE VICOMTE DE BltAGELOHTKft. unraveling of difficult circumstances, captains to divine the issue of battles, and physicians to cure the sick. Louis XIV., to whom his mother had taught this axiom, among many others, understood at once that M. le Cardinal must be very ill. Scarcely had Anne of Austria conducted the young queen to her apartments and relieved her brows of the headdress of ceremony, when she went to see her son in his cabinet, where, alone, melancholy and depressed, hs was indulging, as if to exercise his will, in one of those ter- rible inward passions — king's passions — which create events when they break out, and which, with Louis XIV,, thanks to his astonishing command over himself, became such benign tempests that his most violent, his only passion, that which F. Simon mentions with astonishment, was that famous passion of anger which he exhibited fifty years later, on the occasion of a little concealment of the Due de Maine, and which had for result a shower of blows inflicted with a cane upon the back of a poor valet who had stolen a biscuit. The young king then was, as we have seen, prey to a double excitement; and he said to himself as he looked in a glass, "Oh, king! king by name, and not in fact; phan- tom, vain phantom as thou art! inert statue, which has no other power than that of provoking salutations from cour- tiers, when wilt thou be able to raise thy velvet arm, or clinch 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 of thy gallery?" Then, passing his hand over his brow, and feeling the want of air, he approached a window, whence he saw below some cavaliers talking together, and groups of the timidly curious. These cavaliers were a fraction of the watch; the groups were busy portions of the people, to whom a king is always a curious thing, as a rhinoceros, a crocodile, or a serpent is. He struck his brow with his open hand, crying: "King of France! what a 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