“Do you not see,” she said, one day, “what a crisis is at hand?”

“What crisis?” I asked.

“The king is dying of ennui.”

“True.”

“Does it not alarm you?” said the maréchale.

“Why should it?”

“What makes him so? Think well when I tell you that your mortal enemy has seized Louis XV; your most redoubtable enemy, ennui!”

“Very well; but what would you have me do?”

“You must amuse him.”

“That is easier said than done.”