7/125 p. 89.] " I will settle this matter with your Majesty's ministers," said the Portuguese ambassador one day to the young king. "I have no ministers, Mr.Ambassador," replied Louis XIV.; "you mean to say my men of business." Long habituation to the office of king was not destined to wear out, to exhaust, the youthful ardor of King Louis XIV. He had been for a long while governing, when he wrote, "You must not imagine, my son, that affairs of state are like those obscure and thorny passages in the sciences which you will perhaps have found fatiguing, at which the mind strives to raise itself, by an effort, beyond itself, and which repel us quite as much by their, at any rate apparent, uselessness as by their difficulty. |