"Your suspicions shall be changed to certainty by a very simple course. We will have the Duke of Choiseul here. We will confront the parties at odds, as the lawyers say."
At this moment the usher opened the door and announced that the prince royal was waiting in the king's apartments to see him.
"It is written I shall have no peace," grumbled Louis. But he was not sorry to avoid the wrangle with Choiseul, and he brightened up. "I am going, countess. Farewell! you see how miserable I am with everybody pulling me about. Ah, if the philosophers only knew what a dog's life a king has—especially when he is king of France."
"But what am I say to the Duke of Choiseul?"
"Send him to me, countess."
Kissing her hand, trembling with fury, he hastened away as usual, fearing every time to lose the fruit of a battle won by palliatives and common cunning.
"Alas! he escapes us again!" wailed the courtesan, clenching her plump hands in vexation.
[CHAPTER XVII.]
A ROYAL CLOCK-REPAIRER.
In the Hall of the Clocks, in Versailles Palace, a pink-cheeked and meek-eyed young gentleman was walking about with a somewhat vulgar step. His arms were pendent and his head sunk forward. He was in his seventeenth year. He was recognizable as the king's heir by being the living image of the Bourbon race, most exaggerated. Louis Auguste, Duke of Berry and heir to the throne as the dauphin, soon wearied of his lounge and stopped to gaze with the air of one who understood horology, on the great clock in the back of the hall. It was a universal machine, which told of time to the century, with the lunar phases and the courses of the planets, and was always the prince's admiration.