l external, bright as summer is bright, gay as
summer is gay, cheerful as summer is cheerful. The brilliancy of Louis de
Gonzague showed more sombrely, as melting gold flows in a crucible. No
one who saw the picture could fail to deny its physical beauty, but many
would deny it the instant, the appealing charm which caught at the heart
of the spectator with the first glance he gave to the canvas that
portrayed Louis de Nevers. In contrast, too, were the very garments of
the two men, for the dead duke affected light, airy, radiant
colors--clear blues, and clear pale-yellows, and delicate reds with
subtle emphasis of gold and silver; but the splendor of Gonzague's
apparel was sombre, like his beauty, with black for its dominant note,
and only deep wine-colored crimsons or fierce ambers to lighten its
solemnity.

The third picture, which was placed between Louis de Nevers and Louis de
Gonzague, was the portrait of Louis, not as he now looked, being King of
France in reality, but as he looked some seventeen years earlier, when
the cardinal was beginning his career, and when the peevishness of youth
had not soured into the yellow melancholy of the monarch of middle age.

It was in this room, consecrated to the memory of his dead friend, to the
honor of his living friend, and to the glory of his own existence, that
Louis de Gonzague loved to work. It was a proof of his well-balanced
philosophy that he found nothing to trouble him in the juxtaposition of
the three pictures. The great double doors at one end of the room served
to shut off a hall devoted for the most part to the private suppers which
it was Louis de Gonzague's delight to give to chosen friends of both
sexes, and when, as often happened, supper ended, and a choice company of
half-drunken women and wholly drunken men reeled through the open doors
into the room where the three Louis reigned, Gonzague, who himself kept
always sober, was no more than cynically amused by the contrast between
the noisy and careless crew who had invaded the chamber and the sinister
gravity with which the portraits of the three Louis regarded one
another.

The king himself, who sometimes since his freedom surreptitiously made
one at these merry gatherings, where a princely fortune and a more than
princely taste directed all that appealed to all appetites--the king
himself, coming flushed from one of these famous suppers into the sudden
coolness and quiet of the great room, would appear