“What kind of sugar-plums are these?” asked his Majesty.
“Sire,” replied the priest, “they are a remedy for the plague.”
“Well said,” exclaimed the King; “you are a fine paillard; you are the man for me,” and he took him into his service, being fond of bon-mots and sharp wits.
Another amusing anecdote tells how a certain French baron, having lost everything at play, happening to be in the King’s chamber, secreted a small clock ornamented with massive gold up his sleeve. A few minutes afterwards the clock began to strike the hour, much to the consternation of the baron, and the surprise of those present. The King, who, as it chanced, had detected the theft, burst out laughing, and the baron, self-convicted, fell on his knees before the King, saying, “Sire, the pricks of gaming are so powerful that they have driven me to commit a dishonest act, for which I beg your mercy.”
But the King cut short his words, exclaiming: “The pastime which you have contrived for us so far surpasses the injury you have done me that the clock is yours. I give it you with all my heart.”
In one of his journeys, the story goes that Louis XI. went into the kitchen of an inn where he was not known, and, seeing a lad turning a spit, he asked his name and employment. The lad replied that his name was Berringer, that he “was not a very great man, but that still he got as much as the King of France.”
“And what, my lad, does the King of France get?” inquired Louis.
“His wages,” replied the boy, “which he holds from God, and I hold mine from the King”—an answer which so pleased Louis that he gave the lad a situation to attend on his person.
When called upon one day to give his opinion in some great emergency, the Duke of Sully observed the favourites of the new king, Louis XIII., whispering to one another and sneering at his somewhat rough exterior. “Whenever your Majesty’s father,” remarked the old statesman, “did me the honour to consult me, he ordered the buffoons of Court to leave the audience chamber”—a pointed reproof which at once silenced the satellites, who forthwith retired in confusion.
One day Marshal Bassompierre, on his release from the Bastille—where after twelve years’ imprisonment he had grown extremely fat—presented himself at Court, when the Queen thought it a good joke to ask him how soon he meant to lie in; to which the Marshal replied, “May it please your Majesty, I am only waiting for a wise woman.” The King, Louis XIII., asked him his age, whereupon the Marshal answered that he was fifty, at which his Majesty looked surprised, as Bassompierre looked quite sixty. But the latter continued: “Sire, I deduct twelve years passed in the Bastille, because I did not employ them in your service.” Before his imprisonment he was one day describing his embassy to Spain, and relating how he made his solemn entry into Madrid seated on a mule, when Louis exclaimed, “An ass seated on a mule!” “Yes, sire,” retorted Bassompierre, “and what made the joke better was that I represented you.”