Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10
The King's Closet at the Tuileries.

We will leave Villefort on the road to Paris, travelling --
thanks to trebled fees -- with all speed, and passing
through two or three apartments, enter at the Tuileries the
little room with the arched window, so well known as having
been the favorite closet of Napoleon and Louis XVIII., and
now of Louis Philippe.

There, seated before a walnut table he had brought with him
from Hartwell, and to which, from one of those fancies not
uncommon to great people, he was particularly attached, the
king, Louis XVIII., was carelessly listening to a man of
fifty or fifty-two years of age, with gray hair,
aristocratic bearing, and exceedingly gentlemanly attire,
and meanwhile making a marginal note in a volume of
Gryphius's rather inaccurate, but much sought-after, edition
of Horace -- a work which was much indebted to the sagacious
observations of the philosophical monarch.

"You say, sir" -- said the king.

"That I am exceedingly disquieted, sire."

"Really, have you had a vision of the seven fat kine and the
seven lean kine?"

"No, sire, for that would only betoken for us seven years of
plenty and seven years of scarcity; and with a king as full
of foresight as your majesty, scarcity is not a thing to be
feared."

"Then of what other scourge are you afraid, my dear Blacas?"

"Sire, I have every reason to believe that a storm is
brewing in the south."

"Well, my dear duke," replied Louis XVIII., "I think you are
wrongly informed, and know positively that, on the contrary,
it is very fine weather in that direction." Man of ability
as he was, Louis XVIII. liked a pleasant jest.

"Sire," continued M. de Blacas, "if it only be to reassure a
faithful servant, will your majesty send into Languedoc,
Provence, and Dauphine, trusty men, who will bring you back
a faithful report as to the feeling in these three
provinces?"

"Caninus surdis," replied the king, continuing the
annotations in his Horace.

"Sire," replied the courtier, laughing, in order that he
might seem to comprehend the quotation, "your majesty may be
perfectly right in relying on the good feeling of France,
but I fear I am not altogether wrong in dreading some
desperate attempt."

"By whom?"

"By Bonaparte, or, at least, by his adherents."

"My dear Blacas," said the king, "you with your alarms
prevent me from working."

"And you, sire, prevent me from sleeping with your
security."

"Wait, my dear sir, wait a moment; for I have such a
delightful note on the Pastor quum traheret -- wait, and I
will listen to you afterwards."

There was a brief pause, during which