“What for?”
“To sleep with you; they will take your illness from you.”
“Thanks, sire,” said St. Luc, putting them back in their basket, “but I have no confidence in your receipt.”
“I will come and visit you in the night, St. Luc.”
“Pray do not, sire, you will only disturb me,” and saluting the king, he went away. Chicot had already disappeared, and there only remained with the king the valets, who covered his face with a mask of fine cloth, plastered with the perfumed cream, in which were holes for the eyes, nose, and mouth; a cap of silk and silver fixed it on the forehead and ears. They next covered his arms with sleeves made of wadded silk, and then presented him with kid gloves, also greased inside.
These mysteries of the royal toilet finished, they presented to him his soup in a golden cup. Then Henri said a prayer, a short one that night, and went to bed.
When settled there, he ordered them to carry away the flowers, which were beginning to make the air sickly, and to open the window for a moment. Then the valet closed the doors and curtains, and called in Narcissus, the king’s favorite dog, who, jumping on the bed, settled himself at once on the king’s feet. The valet next put out the wax-lights, lowered the lamp, and went out softly.
Already, more tranquil and nonchalant than the lazy monks of his kingdom in their fat abbeys, the King of France no longer remembered that there was a France.—He slept.
Every noise was hushed, and one might have heard a bat fly in the somber corridors of the Louvre.