I advanced to pay my respects to Madame, and kissed the hand, which, without at once breaking off her conversation, she extended to me.
"But such powers!" the Abbé, who had something of the reputation of a philosophe, was saying to her. "Without limit! Without check! Misused, Madame----"
"But the King is too good!" Madame la Marquise answered, smiling.
"When well advised, I agree. But then the deficit?"
The Marquise shrugged her shoulders. "His Majesty must have money," she said.
"Yes--but whence?" the Abbé asked, with answering shrug.
"The King was too good at the beginning," Madame replied, with a touch of severity. "He should have made them register the edicts. However, the Parliament has always given way, and will do so again."
"The Parliament--yes," the Abbé retorted, smiling indulgently. "But it is no longer a question of the Parliament; and the States General----"
"States General pass," Madame responded grandly. "The King remains!"
"Yet if trouble comes?"