l 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 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 surroun