they had been wont to find shelter in political storms.  They now only saw their recent tombs.  Parliament was dumb; and men felt that nothing could be opposed to the monstrous growth of the Cardinal’s usurping power.  No one was entirely deceived by the affected sufferings of the minister.  None was touched with that feigned agony which had too often deceived the public hope; and distance nowhere prevented the weight of the dreaded ‘parvenu’ from being felt.

The love of the people soon revived toward the son of Henri IV.  They hastened to the churches; they prayed, and even wept.  Unfortunate princes are always loved.  The melancholy of Louis, and his mysterious sorrow interested all France; still living, they already regretted him, as if each man desired to be the depositary of his troubles ere he carried away with him the grand mystery of what is suffered by men placed so high that they can see nothing before them but their tomb.

The King, wishing to reassure the whole nation, announced the temporary reestablishment of his health, and ordered the court to prepare for a grand hunting party to be given at Chambord—­a royal domain, whither his brother, the Duc d’Orleans, prayed him to return.

This beautiful abode was the favorite retreat of Louis, doubtless because, in harmony with his feelings, it combined grandeur with sadness.  He often passed whole months there, without seeing any one whatsoever, incessantly reading and re-reading mysterious papers, writing unknown documents, which he locked up in an iron coffer, of which he alone had the key.  He sometimes delighted in being served by a single domestic, and thus so to forget himself by the absence of his suite as to live for many days together like a poor man or an exiled citizen, loving to figure to himself misery or persecution, in order the better to enjoy royalty afterward.  Another time he would be in a more entire solitude; and having forbidden any human creature to approach him, clothed in the habit of a monk, he would shut himself up in the vaulted chapel.  There, reading the life of Charles V, he would imagine himself at St. Just, and chant over himself that mass for the dead which brought death upon the head of the Spanish monarch.

But in the midst of these very chants and meditations his feeble mind was pursued and distracted by contrary images.  Never did life and the world appear to him more fair than in such times of solitude among the tombs.  Between his eyes and the page which he endeavored to read passed brilliant processions, victorious armies, or nations transported with love.  He saw himself powerful, combating, triumphant, adored; and if a ray of the sun through the large windows fell upon him, suddenly rising from the foot of the altar, he felt himself carried away by a thirst for daylight and the open air, which led him from his gloomy retreat.  But returned to real life, he found there once more disgust and ennui, for the first men he met recalled his power to his recollection by their homage.