“Mon Dieu! why, some one,” cried Madame, “like Mademoiselle de Keroualle, for instance!”
“Oh! why, yes!” said Louis XIV.; “you have hit the mark,—it is you who have found, my sister.”
“I will take her; she will have no cause to complain, I suppose.”
“Oh! no, I will name her seductrice plenipotentiaire at once, and will add a dowry to the title.”
“That is well.”
“I fancy you already on your road, my dear little sister, consoled for all your griefs.”
“I will go, on two conditions. The first is, that I shall know what I am negotiating about.”
“That is it. The Dutch, you know, insult me daily in their gazettes, and by their republican attitude. I do not like republics.”
“That may easily be imagined, sire.”
“I see with pain that these kings of the sea—they call themselves so—keep trade from France in the Indies, and that their vessels will soon occupy all the ports of Europe. Such a power is too near me, sister.”