“Medals,” repeated the king, looking at Colbert.
“Your majesty,” the ambassador ventured, “should be quite sure—”
The king still looked at Colbert; but Colbert appeared not to understand him, and maintained an unbroken silence, notwithstanding the king’s repeated hints. D’Artagnan then approached the king, and taking a piece of money out of his pocket, he placed it in the king’s hands, saying, “This is the medal your majesty alludes to.”
The king looked at it, and with a look which, ever since he had become his own master, was ever piercing as the eagle’s, observed an insulting device representing Holland arresting the progress of the sun, with this inscription: “In conspectu meo stetit sol.”
“In my presence the sun stands still,” exclaimed the king, furiously. “Ah! you will hardly deny it now, I suppose.”
“And the sun,” said D’Artagnan, “is this,” as he pointed to the panels of the cabinet, where the sun was brilliantly represented in every direction, with this motto, “Nec pluribus impar.” [7]
Louis’s anger, increased by the bitterness of his own personal sufferings, hardly required this additional circumstance to foment it. Every one saw, from the kindling passion in the king’s eyes, that an explosion was imminent. A look from Colbert kept postponed the bursting of the storm. The ambassador ventured to frame excuses by saying that the vanity of nations was a matter of little consequence; that Holland was proud that, with such limited resources, she had maintained her rank as a great nation, even against powerful monarchs, and that if a little smoke had intoxicated his countrymen, the king would be kindly disposed, and would even excuse this intoxication. The king seemed as if he would be glad of some suggestion; he looked at Colbert, who remained impassible; then at D’Artagnan, who simply shrugged his shoulders, a movement which was like the opening of the flood-gates, whereby the king’s anger, which he had restrained for so long a period, now burst forth. As no one knew what direction his anger might take, all preserved a dead silence. The second ambassador took advantage of it to begin his excuses also. While he was speaking, and while the king, who had again gradually returned to his own personal reflections, was automatically listening to the voice, full of nervous anxiety, with the air of an absent man listening to the murmuring of a cascade, D’Artagnan, on whose left hand Saint-Aignan was standing, approached the latter, and, in a voice which was loud enough to reach the king’s ears, said: “Have you heard the news?”
“What news?” said Saint-Aignan.
“About La Valliere.”
The king started, and advanced his head.