“I am not a minister, to talk politics.”

“Well, Joyeuse, I want your brother.”

“He, like myself, is at your majesty’s service.”

“Then I may count on him?”

“Doubtless.”

“I wish to send him on a little mission.”

“Out of Paris?”

“Yes.”

“In that case, it is impossible.”

“How so?”

“Du Bouchage cannot go away just now.”

The king looked astonished.  “What do you mean?” said he.

“Sire,” said Joyeuse quietly, “it is the simplest thing possible.  Du Bouchage is in love, but he had carried on his negotiations badly, and everything was going wrong; the poor boy was growing thinner and thinner.”

“Indeed,” said the king, “I have remarked it.”

“And he had become sad, mordieu! as if he had lived in your majesty’s court.”

A kind of grunt, proceeding from the corner of the room interrupted Joyeuse, who looked round astonished.

“It is nothing, Joyeuse,” said the king, laughing, “only a dog asleep on the footstool.  You say, then, that Du Bouchage grew sad?—­”

“Sad as death, sire.  It seems he has met with some woman of an extraordinary disposition.  However, one sometimes succeeds as well with this sort of women as with others, if you only set the right way to work.”

“You would not have been embarrassed, libertine!”

“You understand, sire, that no sooner had he made me his confidant, than I undertook to save him.”

“So that—­”

“So that already the cure commences.”

“What, is he less in love?”

“No; but he has more hope of making her so.  For the future, instead of sighing with the lady, we mean to amuse her in every possible way.  To-night I stationed thirty Italian musicians under her balcony.”

“Ah! ma foi! music would not have amused me when I was in love with Madame de Conde.”

“No; but you were in love, sire; and she is as cold as an icicle.”

“And you think music will melt her?”

“Diable!  I do not say that she will come at once and throw herself into the arms of Du Bouchage, but she will be pleased at all this being done for herself alone.  If she do not care for this, we shall have plays, enchantments, poetry—­in fact, all the pleasures of the earth, so that, even if we do not bring gayety back to her, I hope we shall to Du Bouchage.”

“Well, I hope so; but since it would be so trying to him to leave Paris, I hope you are not also, like him, the slave of some passion?”

“I never was more free, sire.”

“Oh!  I thought you were in love with a beautiful lady?”

“Yes, sire, so I was; but imagine that this evening, after having given my lesson to Du Bouchage, I went to see her, with my head full of his love story, and, believing myself almost as much in love as he, I found a trembling frightened woman, and thinking I had disturbed her somehow, I tried to reassure her, but it was useless.  I interrogated her, but she did not reply.  I tried to embrace her, and she turned her head away.  I grew angry, and we quarreled:  and she told me she should never be at home to me any more."’