blic hope; and distance nowhere prevented the weight
of the dreaded 'parvenu' from being felt.

The love of the people soon revived toward the son of Henri IV. They
hastened to the churches; they prayed, and even wept. Unfortunate princes
are always loved. The melancholy of Louis, and his mysterious sorrow
interested all France; still living, they already regretted him, as if
each man desired to be the depositary of his troubles ere he carried away
with him the grand mystery of what is suffered by men placed so high that
they can see nothing before them but their tomb.

The King, wishing to reassure the whole nation, announced the temporary
reestablishment of his health, and ordered the court to prepare for a
grand hunting party to be given at Chambord--a royal domain, whither his
brother, the Duc d'Orleans, prayed him to return.

This beautiful abode was the favorite retreat of Louis, doubtless
because, in harmony with his feelings, it combined grandeur with sadness.
He often passed whole months there, without seeing any one whatsoever,
incessantly reading and re-reading mysterious papers, writing unknown
documents, which he locked up in an iron coffer, of which he alone had
the key. He sometimes delighted in being served by a single domestic, and
thus so to forget himself by the absence of his suite as to live for many
days together like a poor man or an exiled citizen, loving to figure to
himself misery or persecution, in order the better to enjoy royalty
afterward. Another time he would be in a more entire solitude; and having
forbidden any human creature to approach him, clothed in the habit of a
monk, he would shut himself up in the vaulted chapel. There, reading the
life of Charles V, he would imagine himself at St. Just, and chant over
himself that mass for the dead which brought death upon the head of the
Spanish monarch.

But in the midst of these very chants and meditations his feeble mind was
pursued and distracted by contrary images. Never did life and the world
appear to him more fair than in such times of solitude among the tombs.
Between his eyes and the page which he endeavored to read passed
brilliant processions, victorious armies, or nations transported with
love. He saw himself powerful, combating, triumphant, adored; and if a
ray of the sun through the large windows fell upon him, suddenly rising
from the foot of the altar, he felt himself carried away by a thirst for
daylight and the open air,