which the Mediterranean reveals under the keels of its ships in a
clear summer day, a gigantic mirror in which heaven delights to reflect
sometimes its stars, sometimes its storms.

The king was short of stature--he was scarcely five feet two inches: but
his youth made up for this defect, set off likewise by great nobleness
in all his movements, and by considerable address in all bodily
exercises.

Certes, he was already quite a king, and it was a great thing to be a
king in that period of traditional devotedness and respect; but as,
up to that time, he had been but seldom and always poorly shown to the
people, as they to whom he was shown saw him by the side of his mother,
a tall woman, and monsieur le cardinal, a man of commanding presence,
many found him so little of a king as to say,--

"Why, the king is not so tall as monsieur le cardinal!"

Whatever may be thought of these physical observations, which were
principally made in the capital, the young king was welcomed as a god by
the inhabitants of Blois, and almost like a king by his uncle and aunt,
Monsieur and Madame, the inhabitants of the castle.

It must, however, be allowed, that when he saw, in the hall of
reception, chairs of equal height for himself, his mother, the cardinal,
and his uncle and aunt, a disposition artfully concealed by the
semi-circular form of the assembly, Louis XIV. became red with anger,
and looked around him to ascertain by the countenances of those that
were present, if this humiliation had been prepared for him. But as he
saw nothing upon the impassible visage of the cardinal, nothing on that
of his mother, nothing on those of the assembly, he resigned himself,
and sat down, taking care to be seated before anybody else.

The gentlemen and ladies were presented to their majesties and monsieur
le cardinal.

The king remarked that his mother and he scarcely knew the names of any
of the persons who were presented to them; whilst the cardinal, on the
contrary, never failed, with an admirable memory and presence of mind,
to talk to every one about his estates, his ancestors, or his children,
some of whom he named, which enchanted those worthy country gentlemen,
and confirmed them in the idea that he alone is truly king who knows his
subjects, from the same reason that the sun has no rival, because the
sun alone warms and lightens.

The study of the young king, which had begun a long time before, without
anybody suspecting it, wa