"Whom are you for making emperor, Souvre ?" he asked one of his courtiers.

"Faith, sir," answered the marquis, "I trouble myself very little about it; but if your Majesty pleased, you might tell us more about it than anybody." "No," said the king; "I shall have nothing to do with it; I shall look on from Mont-Pagnotte" (a post of observation out of cannon-shot).

"Ah, sir," replied Souvre, "your Majesty will be very cold there, and very ill lodged." " How so ?" said the king.

"Sir," replied Souvre, because your ancestors never had any house built there." "A very pretty answer," adds the advocate Barbier; "and as regards the question, nothing can be made of it, because the king is mighty close." A powerful intrigue was urging the king to war.

Cardinal Fleury, prudent, economizing, timid as he was, had taken a liking for a man of adventurous, and sometimes chimerical spirit.