.

Last night the four and twenty violins, under the king's command, had
shrilled their chorus, as had been their wont for years while the master
dined. This morning the cordon of drums and hautboys had pealed their
high and martial music. Useless. The one or the other music fell upon
ears too dull to hear. The formal tribute to the central soul for a time
continued of its own inertia; for a time royalty had still its worship;
yet the custom was but a lagging one. The musicians grimaced and made
what discord they liked, openly, insolently, scorning this weak and
withered figure on the silken bed. The cordon of the white and blue
guards of the Household still swept about the vast pleasure grounds of
this fairy temple; yet the officers left their posts and conversed one
with the other. Musicians and guards, spectators and populace, all were
waiting, waiting until the end should come. Farther out and beyond,
where the peaked roofs of Paris rose, back of that line which this
imperious mind had decreed should not be passed by the dwellings of
Paris, which must not come too near this temple of luxury, nor disturb
the king while he enjoyed himself--back of the perfunctorily loyal
guards of the Household, there reached the ragged, shapeless masses of
the people of Paris and of France, waiting, smiling, as some animal
licking its chops in expectation of some satisfying thing. They were
waiting for news of the death of this shrunken man, this creature once
so full of arrogant lust, then so full of somber repentance, now so full
of the very taste of death.

On the great tapestry that hung above the head of the curtained bed
shone the double sun of Louis the Grand, which had meant death and
devastation to so much of Europe. It blazed, mimicking the glory that
was gone; but toward it there was raised no sword nor scepter more in
vow or exaltation. The race was run, the sun was sinking to its setting.
Nothing but a man--a weary, worn-out, dying man--was Louis, the Grand
Monarque, king for seventy-two years of France, almost king of Europe.
This death-bed lay in the center of a land oppressed, ground down,
impoverished. The hearts and lives of thousands were in these
colonnades. The people had paid for their king. They had fed him fat and
kept him full of loves. In return, he had trampled the people into the
very dust. He had robbed even their ancient nobles of honors and
consideration. Blackened, ruined, a vast graveyard, a monument