ook to France for help. Of course, knowing your Majesty's mind,
I answered unhesitatingly that he might."

"You did what?"

"I answered, sire, that he might."

King Louis flushed with anger, and he caught up the tongs from the grate
with a motion as though he would have struck his minister with them.
Madame sprang from her chair, and laid her hand upon his arm with a
soothing gesture. He threw down the tongs again, but his eyes still
flashed with passion as he turned them upon Louvois.

"How dared you?" he cried.

"But, sire--"

"How dared you, I say? What! You venture to answer such a message
without consulting me! How often am I to tell you that I am the state--
I alone; that all is to come from me; and that I am answerable to God
only? What are you? My instrument! my tool! And you venture to act
without my authority!"

"I thought that I knew your wishes, sire," stammered Louvois, whose
haughty manner had quite deserted him, and whose face was as white as
the ruffles of his shirt.

"You are not there to think about my wishes, sir. You are there to
consult them and to obey them. Why is it that I have turned away from
my old nobility, and have committed the affairs of my kingdom to men
whose names have never been heard of in the history of France, such men
as Colbert and yourself? I have been blamed for it. There was the Duc
de St. Simon, who said, the last time that he was at the court, that it
was a bourgeois government. So it is. But I wished it to be so,
because I knew that the nobles have a way of thinking for themselves,
and I ask for no thought but mine in the governing of France. But if my
bourgeois are to receive messages and give answers to embassies, then
indeed I am to be pitied. I have marked you of late, Louvois. You have
grown beyond your station. You take too much upon yourself. See to it
that I have not again to complain to you upon this matter."

The humiliated minister sat as one crushed, with his chin sunk upon his
breast. The king muttered and frowned for a few minutes, but the cloud
cleared gradually from his face, for his fits of anger were usually as
short as they were fierce and sudden.

"You will detain that messenger, Louvois," he said at last, in a calm
voice.

"Yes, sire."

"And we shall see at the council meeting to-morrow that a fitting reply
be sent to Lord Sunderland. It would be best perhaps not to be too free
with our promises in the matter. These E