"Two words aside with you, Monsieur le Maréchal."
The other commissioners drew back.
"I am at the king's commands," said the marshal.
The king signed to the marshal to come to him, and the marshal obeyed.
"Upon your word of honour, monsieur," the king said, looking the marshal straight in the face, "does the Parisian army really number as many as sixty thousand men, as you have assured me?"
The marshal no doubt thought it would be a pious fraud to save the country from civil war. And, perhaps, he may at the same time have believed he was telling the truth: the plain, the road, the whole country between Versailles and Rambouillet was covered with men.
"On my word of honour, it is so, sire!" he said.
"That is all," said Charles X.; "you may withdraw.... I shall take the advice of the dauphin and of the Duc de Raguse."
The commissioners went away; but the dauphin declined to offer advice.