see
youth full of discouragement and fear, I see it timid and despoiled,
when it ought to be rich and powerful. I yesterday evening, for example,
open the door to a king of England, whose father, humble as I am, I
was near saving, if God had not been against me--God, who inspired His
elect, Cromwell! I open, I said, the door, that is to say, the palace of
one brother to another brother, and I see--stop, sire, that is a load
on my heart!--I see the minister of that king drive away the proscribed
prince, and humiliate his master by condemning to want another king, his
equal. Then I see my prince, who is young, handsome, and brave, who
has courage in his heart, and lightning in his eye,--I see him tremble
before a priest, who laughs at him behind the curtain of his alcove,
where he digests all the gold of France, which he afterwards stuffs
into secret coffers. Yes--I understand your looks, sire. I am bold to
madness; but what is to be said? I am an old man, and I tell you here,
sire, to you, my king, things which I would cram down the throat of any
one who should dare to pronounce them before me. You have commanded me
to pour out the bottom of my heart before you, sire, and I cast at the
feet of your majesty the pent-up indignation of thirty years, as I would
pour out all my blood, if your majesty commanded me to do so."

The king, without speaking a word, wiped the drops of cold and abundant
perspiration which trickled from his temples. The moment of silence
which followed this vehement outbreak represented for him who had
spoken, and for him who had listened, ages of suffering.

"Monsieur," said the king at length, "you spoke the word forgetfulness.
I have heard nothing but that word; I will reply, then, to it alone.
Others have perhaps been able to forget, but I have not, and the proof
is, that I remember that one day of riot, that one day when the furious
people, raging and roaring as the sea, invaded the royal palace; that
one day when I feigned sleep in my bed, one man alone, naked sword in
hand, concealed behind my curtain, watched over my life, ready to risk
his own for me, as he had before risked it twenty times for the lives of
my family. Was not the gentleman, whose name I then demanded, called M.
d'Artagnan? say, monsieur."

"Your majesty has a good memory," replied the officer, coldly.

"You see, then," continued the king, "if I have such remembrances of my
childhood, what an amount I may gather in the age