out more for the former quality than for the latter. It was
men of genius that he wanted, and found. It could not be said that
Corneille, Bossuet, Racine and Conde were people of the clever sort (DES
HOMMES D'ESPRIT).'

EGO. "'On the whole, there is that in the Country which really deserves
to be happy, It is asserted that your Majesty has said, If one would
have a fine dream, one must--'

KING. "'Yes, it is true,--be King of France.'

EGO. "'If Francis I. and Henri IV. had come into the world after your
Majesty, they would have said, "be King of Prussia."'

KING. "'Tell me, pray, is there no citable Writer left in France?'

"This made me laugh; the King asked the reason. I told him, He reminded
me of the RUSSE A PARIS, that charming little piece of verse of M. de
Voltaire's; and we remembered charming things out of it, which made us
both laugh. He said,

KING. "'I have sometimes heard the Prince de Conti spoken of: what sort
of man is he?'

EGO. "'He is a man composed of twenty or thirty men. He is proud, he is
affable,'"--he is fiddle, he is diddle (in the seesaw epigrammatic way,
for a page or more); and is not worth pen and ink from us, since the
time old Marshal Traun got us rid of him,--home across the Rhine, full
speed, with Croats sticking on his skirts. [Supra, viii. 475.]

"This portrait seemed to amuse the King. One had to captivate him by
some piquant detail; without that, he would escape you, give you no time
to speak. The success generally began by the first words, no matter how
vague, of any conversation; these he found means to make interesting;
and what, generally, is mere talk about the weather became at once
sublime; and one never heard anything vulgar from him. He ennobled
everything; and the examples of Greeks and Romans, or of modern
Generals, soon dissipated everything of what, with others, would have
remained trivial and commonplace.

"'Have you ever,' said he, 'seen such a rain as yesterday's? Your
orthodox Catholics will say, "That comes of having a man without
religion among us: what are we to do with this cursed (MAUDIT) King; a
Protestant at lowest?" for I really think I brought you bad luck. Your
soldiers would be saying, "Peace we have; and still is this devil of a
man to trouble us!"'

EGO. "'Certainly, if your Majesty was the cause, it is very bad. Such
a thing is only permitted to Jupiter, who has always good reasons for
everything; and it would have been in his fashion, aft