e at dinner, and see that the cook doesn't forget
the lampreys; Madame le comtesse likes both those things. Can I eat
lampreys?" he added, after a pause, looking anxiously at Coyctier.

For all answer the physician began to examine his master's face. The two
men were a picture in themselves.

History and romance-writers have consecrated the brown camlet coat, and
the breeches of the same stuff, worn by Louis XI. His cap, decorated
with leaden medallions, and his collar of the order of Saint-Michel, are
not less celebrated; but no writer, no painter has represented the face
of that terrible monarch in his last years,--a sickly, hollow, yellow
and brown face, all the features of which expressed a sour craftiness,
a cold sarcasm. In that mask was the forehead of a great man, a brow
furrowed with wrinkles, and weighty with high thoughts; but in his
cheeks and on his lips there was something indescribably vulgar and
common. Looking at certain details of that countenance you would have
thought him a debauched husbandman, or a miserly peddler; and yet, above
these vague resemblances and the decrepitude of a dying old man, the
king, the man of power, rose supreme. His eyes, of a light yellow,
seemed at first sight extinct; but a spark of courage and of anger
lurked there, and at the slightest touch it could burst into flames and
cast fire about him. The doctor was a stout burgher, with a florid face,
dressed in black, peremptory, greedy of gain, and self-important. These
two personages were framed, as it were, in that panelled chamber, hung
with high-warped tapestries of Flanders, the ceiling of which, made of
carved beams, was blackened by smoke. The furniture, the bed, all inlaid
with arabesques in pewter, would seem to-day more precious than they
were at that period when the arts were beginning to produce their
choicest masterpieces.

"Lampreys are not good for you," replied the physician.

That title, recently substituted for the former term of "myrrh-master,"
is still applied to the faculty in England. The name was at this period
given to doctors everywhere.

"Then what may I eat?" asked the king, humbly.

"Salt mackerel. Otherwise, you have so much bile in motion that you may
die on All-Souls' Day."

"To-day!" cried the king in terror.

"Compose yourself, sire," replied Coyctier. "I am here. Try not to fret
your mind; find some way to amuse yourself."

"Ah!" said the king, "my daughter Marie used to succeed in t