“Sire, it is my religion that is more concerned than ever.  I am a Christian, and my law is dear to me.”

“And I am Most Christian,” answered his Majesty, smiling.  “I profess the religion, I keep the law that your ancestors and mine kept before the Reformation.”

“Sire, this reform has been adopted by a great number of monarchs,—­a proof that the Reformation is not the enemy of kings, as is said.”

“Yes, in the case of wise and honest men like yourself, my good friend Petitot; but just as all your brothers have not your talents, so they have not your rectitude and loyalty, which are known to me.”

“Sire, your Majesty overwhelms me; but I beg you to be persuaded that my brothers have been calumniated.”

“Yes, if one is to accuse them in the mass, my dear Petitot; but there are spoil-alls amongst your theologians; intercepted correspondences depose to it.  The allied princes, having been unable to crush me by their invasions and artillery, have recourse to internal and clandestine manoeuvres.  Having failed to corrupt my soldiers, they have essayed to corrupt my clergy, as they did at Montauban and La Rochelle, in the days of Cardinal Richelieu.”

“Sire, do not believe in any such manoeuvres; all your subjects love and admire you, whatever be their faith and communion.”

“Petitot, you are an admirable painter and a most worthy man.  Do not answer me, I beg you.  If I believed you had as much genius and aptitude for great affairs as for the wonders of the brush, I would make you a Counsellor of State on the instant, and a half-hour spent with me and my documents and papers of importance would be sufficient to make you believe and think as I do touching what has been discussed between us.  Madame de Montespan, in great alarm, has told me that you wished to leave me.  You leave me, my good friend!  Where will you find a sky so pure and soft as the sky of France?  Where will you find a King more tenderly attached to men of merit, more particularly, to my dear and illustrious Petitot?”

At these words, pronounced with emotion, the artist felt the tears come into his eyes.  He bent one knee to the ground, respectfully kissed the hand of the monarch, and promised to complete his portrait immediately.

He kept his word to us.  The King’s miniature and my four portraits were finished without hesitation or postponement; and Petitot also consented to copy, for his Majesty, a superb Christine of Sweden, a full-length picture, painted by Le Bourdon.  But at the final revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he thought his conscience, or rather his vanity, compromised, and quitted France, although the King offered to allow him a chaplain of his communion, and a dispensation from all the oaths, to Petitot himself, to Boyer, his brother-in-law, and the chaplain whom they had retained with them.

CHAPTER XXXIV.