Now I have begun to tell it, it must come out, even if you command me to hold my tongue." There was so much resolution expressed in the deep-sunk muscles of the officer's countenance, that Louis XIV.

had no occasion to tell him to continue; he continued, therefore, whilst the king looked at him with a curiosity mingled with admiration.
"Sire, I have, as I have said, now served the house of France thirty-five years; few people have worn out so many swords in that service as I have, and the swords I speak of were good swords, too, sire.

I was a boy, ignorant of everything except courage, when the king your father guessed that there was a man in me.

I was a man, sire, when the Cardinal de Richelieu, who was a judge of manhood, discovered an enemy in me.

Sire, the history of that enmity between the ant and the lion may be read from the first to the last line, in the secret archives of your family.