But reflect, in any case, what a life-problem this of poor Louis, when he rose as Bien-Aime from that Metz sick-bed, really was!  What son of Adam could have swayed such incoherences into coherence?  Could he?  Blindest Fortune alone has cast him on the top of it:  he swims there; can as little sway it as the drift-log sways the wind-tossed moon-stirred Atlantic.  “What have I done to be so loved?” he said then.  He may say now:  What have I done to be so hated?  Thou hast done nothing, poor Louis!  Thy fault is properly even this, that thou didst nothing.  What could poor Louis do?  Abdicate, and wash his hands of it,—­in favour of the first that would accept!  Other clear wisdom there was none for him.  As it was, he stood gazing dubiously, the absurdest mortal extant (a very Solecism Incarnate), into the absurdest confused world;—­wherein at lost nothing seemed so certain as that he, the incarnate Solecism, had five senses; that were Flying Tables (Tables Volantes, which vanish through the floor, to come back reloaded). and a Parc-aux-cerfs.

Whereby at least we have again this historical curiosity:  a human being in an original position; swimming passively, as on some boundless ‘Mother of Dead Dogs,’ towards issues which he partly saw.  For Louis had withal a kind of insight in him.  So, when a new Minister of Marine, or what else it might be, came announcing his new era, the Scarlet-woman would hear from the lips of Majesty at supper:  “He laid out his ware like another; promised the beautifulest things in the world; not a thing of which will come:  he does not know this region; he will see.”  Or again:  “’Tis the twentieth time I hear all that; France will never get a Navy, I believe.”  How touching also was this:  “If I were Lieutenant of Police, I would prohibit those Paris cabriolets.” (Journal de Madame de Hausset, p. 293, &c.)

Doomed mortal;—­for is it not a doom to be Solecism incarnate!  A new Roi Faineant, King Donothing; but with the strangest new Mayor of the Palace:  no bow-legged Pepin now, but that same cloud-capt, fire-breathing Spectre of democracy; incalculable, which is enveloping the world!—­Was Louis no wickeder than this or the other private Donothing and Eatall; such as we often enough see, under the name of Man, and even Man of Pleasure, cumbering God’s diligent Creation, for a time?  Say, wretcheder!  His Life-solecism was seen and felt of a whole scandalised world; him endless Oblivion cannot engulf, and swallow to endless depths,—­not yet for a generation or two.

However, be this as it will, we remark, not without interest, that ’on the evening of the 4th,’ Dame Dubarry issues from the sick-room, with perceptible ‘trouble in her visage.’  It is the fourth evening of May, year of Grace 1774.  Such a whispering in the Oeil-de-Boeuf!  Is he dying then?  What can be said is, that Dubarry seems making up her packages; she sails weeping through her gilt boudoirs, as if taking leave.  D’Aiguilon and Company are near their last card; nevertheless they will not yet throw up the game.  But as for the sacramental controversy, it is as good as settled without being mentioned; Louis can send for his Abbe Moudon in the course of next night, be confessed by him, some say for the space of ‘seventeen minutes,’ and demand the sacraments of his own accord.