While he dictated his instructions, reading them from a small piece of paper, written with his own hand, a deep melancholy seemed to possess him more and more at each word; and when he had ended, he fell back in his chair, his arms crossed, and his head sunk on his breast.

Father Joseph, dropping his pen, arose and was inquiring whether he were ill, when he heard issue from the depths of his chest these mournful and memorable words: 

“What utter weariness! what endless trouble!  If the ambitious man could see me, he would flee to a desert.  What is my power?  A miserable reflection of the royal power; and what labors to fix upon my star that incessantly wavering ray!  For twenty years I have been in vain attempting it.  I can not comprehend that man.  He dare not flee me; but they take him from me—­he glides through my fingers.  What things could I not have done with his hereditary rights, had I possessed them?  But, employing such infinite calculation in merely keeping one’s balance, what of genius remains for high enterprises?  I hold Europe in my hand, yet I myself am suspended by a trembling hair.  What is it to me that I can cast my eyes confidently over the map of Europe, when all my interests are concentrated in his narrow cabinet, and its few feet of space give me more trouble to govern than the whole country besides?  See, then, what it is to be a prime minister!  Envy me, my guards, if you can.”

His features were so distorted as to give reason to fear some accident; and at the same moment he was seized with a long and violent fit of coughing, which ended in a slight hemorrhage.  He saw that Father Joseph, alarmed, was about to seize a gold bell that stood on the table, and, suddenly rising with all the vivacity of a young man, he stopped him, saying: 

“’Tis nothing, Joseph; I sometimes yield to these fits of depression; but they do not last long, and I leave them stronger than before.  As for my health, I know my condition perfectly; but that is not the business in hand.  What have you done at Paris?  I am glad to know the King has arrived in Bearn, as I wished; we shall be able to keep a closer watch upon him.  How did you induce him to come away?”

“A battle at Perpignan.”

“That is not bad.  Well, we can arrange it for him; that occupation will do as well as another just now.  But the young Queen, what says she?”

“She is still furious against you; her correspondence discovered, the questioning to which you had subjected her—­”

“Bah! a madrigal and a momentary submission on my part will make her forget that I have separated her from her house of Austria and from the country of her Buckingham.  But how does she occupy herself?”

“In machinations with Monsieur.  But as we have his entire confidence, here are the daily accounts of their interviews.”