“Have you ever heard, Monsieur,” said Victor-Amadeus, “of a secret society calling itself the Illuminati?”
“Surely, Sire,” answered the visitor, profoundly bewildered. “It is, by general report, a fellowship of star-gazers, who, consulting the heavenly systems, flounder among the earthly.”
“Ay,” said the King: “and they meet at night, as astrologers should—here and there, on dark hill-sides, on remote roads, on lonely wastes. But doubtless you know that?”
“I know nothing whatever about their habits, Sire.”
“So?—I think, Monsieur, but I am not sure, that these ruffles might be doubled. Perhaps, however, it would vulgarise, in the tiniest degree, the exquisite simplicity of your conception. My faith! what Goths we have to educate, artists like you and me! Hopeless to expect their appreciation of these delicate nuances of taste and selection. The many-flounced flower is always foremost in their approval. Sometimes, in despair, I feel that I must yield the eternal conflict—go mad in pea-green stockings and a scarlet wig. But then I think how Nature, in her inaccessible eyries, continues to produce, without a didactic thought, her tastefullest forms; and I am comforted, because I recognise that the final appeal of elegance is to the gods. Has it ever occurred to you, Monsieur, that your patron was murdered by these Illuminati?”
The sudden swerve and swoop brought a gasp from Cartouche, verily as if his Majesty had whipped a hand from behind his back and struck him in the wind. He was, momentarily, quite staggered.
“No, never,” he could only ejaculate.
Victor-Amadeus conned him curiously.
“Admit, Monsieur, for the sake of argument, that it were so,” he said. “How, then, would you regard this Brotherhood?”
“Sire, as your Majesty regarded the Jesuits.”