ome other members of the royal family;
but you will consider this a private audience."

I expressed my gratitude: we moved on; the doors of an apartment were
thrown open; and I saw myself in the presence of Louis XIV.

The room was partially darkened. In the centre of it, on a large sofa,
reclined the King; he was dressed (though this, if I may so speak,
I rather remembered than noted) in a coat of black velvet, slightly
embroidered; his vest was of white satin; he wore no jewels nor orders,
for it was only on grand or gala days that he displayed personal pomp.
At some little distance from him stood three members of the royal
family; them I never regarded: all my attention was bent upon the King.
My temperament is not that on which greatness, or indeed any external
circumstances, make much impression; but as, following at a little
distance the Bishop of Frejus, I approached the royal person, I must
confess that Bolingbroke had scarcely need to have cautioned me not to
appear too self-possessed. Perhaps, had I seen that great monarch in his
_beaux jours_; in the plenitude of his power, his glory, the dazzling
and meridian splendour of his person, his court, and his renown,--pride
might have made me more on my guard against too deep, or at least too
apparent, an impression; but the many reverses of that magnificent
sovereign,--reverses in which he had shown himself more great than in
all his previous triumphs and early successes; his age, his infirmities,
the very clouds round the setting sun, the very howls of joy at the
expiring lion,--all were calculated, in my mind, to deepen respect into
reverence, and tincture reverence itself with awe. I saw before me not
only the majesty of Louis le Grand, but that of misfortune, of weakness,
of infirmity, and of age; and I forgot at once, in that reflection, what
otherwise would have blunted my sentiments of deference, namely, the
crimes of his ministers and the exactions of his reign. Endeavouring to
collect my mind from an embarrassment which surprised myself, I lifted
my eyes towards the King, and saw a countenance where the trace of the
superb beauty for which his manhood had been celebrated still lingered,
broken, not destroyed, and borrowing a dignity even more imposing
from the marks of encroaching years and from the evident exhaustion of
suffering and disease.

Fleuri said, in a low tone, something which my ear did not catch. There
was a pause,--only a moment's pause; a