Before a very small table surrounded with gilt armchairs stood Louis XIII, encircled by the great officers of the crown.  His dress was very elegant:  a kind of fawn-colored vest, with open sleeves, ornamented with shoulder-knots and blue ribbons, covered him down to the waist.  Wide breeches reached to the knee, and the yellow-and-red striped stuff of which they were made was ornamented below with blue ribbons.  His riding-boots, reaching hardly more than three inches above the ankle, were turned over, showing so lavish a lining of lace that they seemed to hold it as a vase holds flowers.  A small mantle of blue velvet, on which was embroidered the cross of the Holy Ghost, covered the King’s left arm, which rested on the hilt of his sword.

His head was uncovered, and his pale and noble face was distinctly visible, lighted by the sun, which penetrated through the top of the tent.  The small, pointed beard then worn augmented the appearance of thinness in his face, while it added to its melancholy expression.  By his lofty brow, his classic profile, his aquiline nose, he was at once recognized as a prince of the great race of Bourbon.  He had all the characteristic traits of his ancestors except their penetrating glance; his eyes seemed red from weeping, and veiled with a perpetual drowsiness; and the weakness of his vision gave him a somewhat vacant look.

He called around him, and was attentive to, the greatest enemies of the Cardinal, whom he expected every moment; and, balancing himself with one foot over the other, an hereditary habit of his family, he spoke quickly, but pausing from time to time to make a gracious inclination of the head, or a gesture of the hand, to those who passed before him with low reverences.

The court had been thus paying its respects to the King for two hours before the Cardinal appeared; the whole court stood in close ranks behind the Prince, and in the long galleries which extended from his tent.  Already longer intervals elapsed between the names of the courtiers who were announced.

“Shall we not see our cousin the Cardinal?” said the King, turning, and looking at Montresor, one of Monsieur’s gentlemen, as if to encourage him to answer.

“He is said to be very ill just now, Sire,” was the answer.

“And yet I do not see how any but your Majesty can cure him,” said the Duc de Beaufort.

“We cure nothing but the king’s evil,” replied Louis; “and the complaints of the Cardinal are always so mysterious that we own we can not understand them.”

The Prince thus essayed to brave his minister, gaining strength in jests, the better to break his yoke, insupportable, but so difficult to remove.  He almost thought he had succeeded in this, and, sustained by the joyous air surrounding him, he already privately congratulated himself on having been able to assume the supreme empire, and for the moment enjoyed all the power of which he fancied himself possessed.  An involuntary