written labours of others. If this
made him a superficial statesman, it made him a prompt one; and there
was never so lucky a minister with so little trouble to himself.*

* At his death appeared the following pnnning epigram:--

"_Floruit_ sine fructu;
_Defloruit_ sine luctu."

"He flowered without fruit, and faded without regret."--ED.

As we approached the end of our destination, we talked of the King. On
this subject he was jealously cautious. But I gleaned from him,
despite of his sagacity, that it was high time to make all use of one's
acquaintance with Madame de Maintenon that one could be enabled to do;
and that it was so difficult to guess the exact places in which power
would rest after the death of the old King that supineness and silence
made at present the most profound policy.

As we alighted from the carriage and I first set my foot within the
palace, I could not but feel involuntarily yet powerfully impressed with
the sense of the spirit of the place. I was in the precincts of that
mighty court which had gathered into one dazzling focus all the rays of
genius which half a century had emitted,--the court at which time had
passed at once from the morn of civilization into its full noon
and glory,--the court of Conde and Turenne, of Villars and of
Tourville,--the court where, over the wit of Grammont, the profusion of
Fouquet, the fatal genius of Louvois (fatal to humanity and to France),
Love, real Love, had not disdained to shed its pathos and its truth, and
to consecrate the hollow pageantries of royal pomp, with the tenderness,
the beauty, and the repentance of La Valliere. Still over that scene
hung the spells of a genius which, if artificial and cold, was also
vast, stately, and magnificent,--a genius which had swelled in the
rich music of Racine, which had raised the nobler spirit and the freer
thought of Pierre Corneille,* which had given edge to the polished
weapon of Boileau, which had lavished over the bright page of
Moliere,--Moliere, more wonderful than all--a knowledge of the humours
and the hearts of men, which no dramatist, save Shakspeare, has
surpassed. Within those walls still glowed, though now waxing faint and
dim, the fame of that monarch who had enjoyed, at least till his later
day, the fortune of Augustus unsullied by the crimes of Octavius. Nine
times, since the sun of that monarch rose, had the Papal Chair received
a new occupant! Six sovereigns had reigned ove