Chapter 17 - Page 2

together seemed to recede from his vision, just as the dome, to which it remained suspended, had done; so that the winged genius which with both its hands supported the crown seemed, though vainly so, to call upon the King, who was fast disappearing from it.

The bed still sank. Louis, with his eyes open, could not resist the deception of this cruel hallucination. At last, as the light of the royal chamber faded away into darkness and gloom, something cold, gloomy, and inexplicable seemed to infect the air. No paintings, nor gold, nor velvet hangings were visible any longer,- nothing but walls of a dull gray color, which the increasing gloom made darker every moment. And yet the bed still continued to descend; and after a minute, which seemed in its duration almost an age to the King, it reached a stratum of air black and still as death, and then it stopped. The King could no longer see the light in his room, except as from the bottom of a well we can see the light of day. “I am under the influence of a terrible dream,” he thought. “It is time to arouse myself. Come, let us wake up!”

Every one has experienced what the above remark conveys; there is no one who in the midst of a suffocating nightmare has not said to himself, by the help of that light which still burns in the brain when every human light is extinguished, “It is nothing but a dream, after all.” This was precisely what Louis XIV said to himself. But when he said, “Let us wake up,” he perceived that not only was he already awake, but still more, that he had his eyes open also. He then looked around him. On his right hand and on his left two armed men stood silently, each wrapped in a huge cloak, and the face covered with a mask; one of them held a small lamp in his hand, whose glimmering light revealed the saddest picture a king could look upon.

Louis said to himself that his dream still lasted, and that all he had to do to cause it to disappear was to move his arms or to say something aloud. He darted from his bed, and found himself upon the damp ground. Then, addressing himself to the man who held the lamp in his hand, he said, “What is this, Monsieur, and what is the meaning of this jest?”

“It is no jest,” replied, in a deep voice, the masked figure that held the lantern.

“Do you belong to M. Fouquet?” inquired the King, greatly astonished at his situation.

“It matters very little to whom we belong,” said the phantom. “We are your masters; that is sufficient.”

The King, more impatient than intimidated, turned to the other masked figure. “If this is a comedy,” he said, “you will tell M. Fouquet that I find it unseemly, and that I desire it should cease.”

The second masked person to whom the King had addressed himself was a man of huge stature and vast