“Sire,” said the cardinal, “I ought certainly to listen to your majesty standing, but the violence of my complaint—”
“No ceremony between us, my dear monsieur le cardinal,” said Louis kindly: “I am your pupil, and not the king, you know very well, and this evening in particular, as I come to you as a petitioner, as a solicitor, and one very humble, and desirous to be kindly received, too.”
Mazarin, seeing the heightened color of the king, was confirmed in his first idea; that is to say, that love thoughts were hidden under all these fine words. This time, political cunning, as keen as it was, made a mistake; this color was not caused by the bashfulness of a juvenile passion, but only by the painful contraction of the royal pride.
Like a good uncle, Mazarin felt disposed to facilitate the confidence.
“Speak, sire,” said he, “and since your majesty is willing for an instant to forget that I am your subject, and call me your master and instructor, I promise your majesty my most devoted and tender consideration.”
“Thanks, monsieur le cardinal,” answered the king; “that which I have to ask of your eminence has but little to do with myself.”
“So much the worse!” replied the cardinal; “so much the worse! Sire, I should wish your majesty to ask of me something of importance, even a sacrifice; but whatever it may be that you ask me, I am ready to set your heart at rest by granting it, my dear sire.”
“Well, this is what brings me here,” said the king, with a beating of the heart that had no equal except the beating of the heart of the minister; “I have just received a visit from my brother, the king of England.”
Mazarin bounded in his bed as if he had been put in relation with a Leyden jar or a voltaic pile, at the same time that a surprise, or rather a manifest disappointment, inflamed his features with such a blaze of anger, that Louis XIV., little diplomatist as he was, saw that the minister had hoped to hear something else.
“Charles II.?” exclaimed Mazarin, with a hoarse voice and a disdainful movement of his lips. “You have received a visit from Charles II.?”