y is willing for an
instant to forget that I am your subject, and call me your master
and instructor, I promise your majesty my most devoted and tender
consideration."

"Thanks, monsieur le cardinal," answered the king; "that which I have to
ask of your eminence has but little to do with myself."

"So much the worse!" replied the cardinal, "so much the worse! Sire, I
should wish your majesty to ask of me something of importance, even a
sacrifice; but whatever it may be that you ask me, I am ready to set
your heart at rest by granting it, my dear sire."

"Well, this is what brings me here," said the king, with a beating
of the heart that had no equal except the beating of the heart of the
minister; "I have just received a visit from my brother, the king of
England."

Mazarin bounded in his bed as if he had been put in relation with a
Leyden jar or a voltaic pile, at the same time that a surprise, or
rather a manifest disappointment, inflamed his features with such a
blaze of anger, that Louis XIV., little diplomatist as he was, saw that
the minister had hoped to hear something else.

"Charles II.?" exclaimed Mazarin, with a hoarse voice and a disdainful
movement of his lips. "You have received a visit from Charles II.?"

"From King Charles II.," replied Louis, according in a marked manner to
the grandson of Henry IV. the title which Mazarin had forgotten to give
him. "Yes, monsieur le cardinal, that unhappy prince has touched my
heart with the relation of his misfortunes. His distress is great,
monsieur le cardinal, and it has appeared painful to me, who have seen
my own throne disputed, who have been forced in times of commotion
to quit my capital,--to me, in short, who am acquainted with
misfortune,--to leave a deposed and fugitive brother without
assistance."

"Eh!" said the cardinal, sharply; "why had he not, as you have, a Jules
Mazarin by his side? His crown would then have remained intact."

"I know all that my house owes to your eminence," replied the king,
haughtily, "and you may believe well that I, on my part, shall never
forget it. It is precisely because my brother the king of England has
not about him the powerful genius who has saved me, it is for that, I
say, that I wish to conciliate the aid of that same genius, and beg you
to extend your arm over his head, well assured, monsieur le cardinal,
that your hand, by touching him only, would know how to replace upon his
brow the crown which fell at t