er the same mahogany (sub iisdem
trabibus). A man, after such an honor, can look for little else in this
world: he has tasted the utmost conceivable earthly happiness, and has
nothing to do now but to fold his arms, look up to heaven, and sing
"Nunc dimittis" and die.

Do not let us abuse poor old Louis on account of this monstrous pride;
but only lay it to the charge of the fools who believed and worshipped
it. If, honest man, he believed himself to be almost a god, it was only
because thousands of people had told him so--people only half liars,
too; who did, in the depths of their slavish respect, admire the man
almost as much as they said they did. If, when he appeared in his
five-hundred-million coat, as he is said to have done, before the
Siamese ambassadors, the courtiers began to shade their eyes and long
for parasols, as if this Bourbonic sun was too hot for them; indeed, it
is no wonder that he should believe that there was something dazzling
about his person: he had half a million of eager testimonies to this
idea. Who was to tell him the truth?--Only in the last years of his life
did trembling courtiers dare whisper to him, after much circumlocution,
that a certain battle had been fought at a place called Blenheim, and
that Eugene and Marlborough had stopped his long career of triumphs.

"On n'est plus heureux a notre age," says the old man, to one of his old
generals, welcoming Tallard after his defeat; and he rewards him
with honors, as if he had come from a victory. There is, if you will,
something magnanimous in this welcome to his conquered general, this
stout protest against Fate. Disaster succeeds disaster; armies after
armies march out to meet fiery Eugene and that dogged, fatal Englishman,
and disappear in the smoke of the enemies' cannon. Even at Versailles
you may almost hear it roaring at last; but when courtiers, who have
forgotten their god, now talk of quitting this grand temple of his, old
Louis plucks up heart and will never hear of surrender. All the gold
and silver at Versailles he melts, to find bread for his armies: all
the jewels on his five-hundred-million coat he pawns resolutely; and,
bidding Villars go and make the last struggle but one, promises, if his
general is defeated, to place himself at the head of his nobles, and
die King of France. Indeed, after a man, for sixty years, has been
performing the part of a hero, some of the real heroic stuff must have
entered into his composit