really _le meilleur fils du monde_) does his best to
console his beloved and find out the reason of her woes. It appears at
last that she thinks she has been bitten by a flea, and as the summer is
very hot, and there has been much talk of mad dogs, she is convinced
that the flea was a mad flea, and that she shall die of hydrophobia. (As
it happens, the flea is not a flea at all, but a grain of snuff.)
However, the Black Doctor is sent for, and finds the King as affable as
usual, but Mlle. de Coulanges coiled up on a sofa--like something
between a cat and a naughty child afraid of being scolded--and hiding
her face. On being coaxed with the proper medical manner, she at last
bursts out laughing, and finally they all laugh together, till his
Majesty spills his coffee on his gold waistcoat, and then pulls the
doctor down on a sofa to talk Paris gossip. And now the Black One clears
himself from any connection with the serpent as far as wisdom is
concerned, though he has plenty of a better kind. Fresh from Gilbert's
appeal to the Archbishop, he tries to interest this so amiable Royalty
in the subject. But the result is altogether unfortunate. The lady is
merely contemptuous and bored. The King gets angry, and displays that
indifference to anybody else's suffering which moralists (whether to an
exaggerated extent or not, is another question) are wont to connect with
excessive attention to a man's own sensual enjoyments. After some by no
means stupid but decidedly acid remarks on Voltaire, Rousseau, and
others, he takes (quite good-naturedly in appearance) the doctor's arm,
walks with him to the end of the long apartment, opens the door, quotes
certain satiric verses on literary and scientific "gents," and--shuts it
on his medical adviser and guest.

I know few things of the kind more neatly done, or better adjusted to
heighten the tragic purpose.

[Sidenote: The Chatteron part.]

To an Englishman the next episode may be less satisfactory, though it
was very popular in France under its original form, and still more so
when Vigny dramatised it in his famous _Chatterton_. It is not that
there is any (or at any rate much) of the usual caricature which was
(let us be absolutely equitable and say) exchanged between the two
countries for so long a time. Vigny married an English wife, knew
something of England, and a good deal of English literature. But,
regardless of his own historical _penchants_ and of the moral of this
very bo