"Every good planet be gracious to your Majesty!" said Galeotti, with an inclination almost Oriental in manner – "Every evil constellation withhold their influences from my royal master!"
"Methinks," replied the King, "that when you look around this apartment, when you think where it is situated, and how guarded, your wisdom might consider that my propitious stars had proved faithless, and that each evil conjunction had already done its worst. Art thou not ashamed, Martius Galeotti, to see me here, and a prisoner, when you recollect by what assurances I was lured hither?"
"And art thou not ashamed, my royal Sire?" replied the philosopher; "thou, whose step in science was so forward, thy apprehension so quick, thy perseverance so unceasing, – art thou not ashamed to turn from the first frown of fortune, like a craven from the first clash of arms? Didst thou propose to become participant of those mysteries which raise men above the passions, the mischances, the pains, the sorrows of life, a state only to be attained by rivalling the firmness of the ancient Stoic, and dost thou shrink from the first pressure of adversity, and forfeit the glorious prize for which thou didst start as a competitor, frightened out of the course, like a scared racer, by shadowy and unreal evils?"
"Shadowy and unreal! frontless as thou art!" exclaimed the King, "is this dungeon unreal? – the weapons of the guards of my detested enemy Burgundy, which you may hear clash at the gate, are those shadows? – What, traitor, are real evils, if imprisonment, dethronement, and danger of life, are not so?"
"Ignorance – ignorance, my brother, and prejudice," answered the sage, with great firmness, "are the only real evils. Believe me, that Kings in the plenitude of power, if immersed in ignorance and prejudice, are less free than sages in a dungeon, and loaded with material chains. Towards this true happiness it is mine to guide you – be it yours to attend to my instructions."
"And it is to such philosophical freedom that your lessons would have guided me?" said the King, very bitterly. "I would you had told me at Plessis, that the dominion promised me so liberally was an empire over my own passions; that the success of which I was assured, related to my progress in philosophy; and that I might become as wise and as learned as a strolling mountebank of Italy! I might surely have attained this mental ascendency at a more moderate price than that of forfeiting the fairest crown in Christendom, and becoming tenant of a dungeon in Peronne! Go, sir, and think not to escape condign punishment – –There is a Heaven above us!"
"I leave you not to your fate," replied Martius, "until I have vindicated, even in your eyes, darkened as they are, that reputation, a brighter gem than the brightest in thy crown, and at which the world shall wonder, ages after all the race of Capet are mouldered into oblivion in the charnels of Saint Denis."
"Speak on," said Louis; "thine impudence cannot make me change my purposes or my opinion – Yet as I may never again pass judgment as a King, I will not censure thee unheard. Speak, then – though the best thou canst say will be to speak the truth. Confess that I am a dupe, thou an impostor, thy pretended science a dream, and the planets which shine above us as little influential of our destiny, as their shadows, when reflected in the river, are capable of altering its course."
"And how know'st thou," answered the Astrologer, boldly, "the secret influence of younder blessed lights? Speak'st thou of their inability to influence waters, when yet thou know'st that even the weakest, the moon herself, – weakest because nearest to this wretched earth of ours, – holds under her domination, not such poor streams as the Somme, but the tides of the mighty ocean itself, which ebb and increase as her disk waxes and wanes, and watch her influence as a slave waits the nod of a Sultana? And now, Louis of Valois, answer my parable in turn – Confess, art thou not like the foolish passenger, who becomes wroth with his pilot because he cannot bring the vessel into harbour without experiencing occasionally the adverse force of winds and currents? I could indeed point to thee the probable issue of thine enterprise as prosperous, but it was in the power of Heaven alone to conduct thee thither; and if the path be rough and dangerous, was it in my power to smooth or render it more safe? Where is thy wisdom of yesterday, which taught thee so truly to discern that the ways of destiny are often ruled to our advantage, though in opposition to our wishes?"
"You remind me – you remind me," said the King, hastily, "of one specific falsehood. You foretold, yonder Scot should accomplish his enterprise fortunately for my interest and honour; and thou knowest it has so terminated, that no more mortal injury could I have received, than from the impression which the issue of that affair is like to make on the excited brain of the Mad Bull of Burgundy. This is a direct falsehood – Thou canst plead no evasion here – canst refer to no remote favourable turn of the tide, for which, like an idiot sitting on the bank until the river shall pass away, thou wouldst have me wait contentedly. – Here thy craft deceived thee – Thou wert weak enough to make a specific prediction, which has proved directly false."