By degrees, the fate of the unfortunate king interested his auditors so greatly, that the play languished even at the royal table, and the young king, with a pensive look and downcast eye, followed, without appearing to give any attention to it, the smallest details of this Odyssey, very picturesquely related by the Comte de Guiche.
The Comtesse de Soissons interrupted the narrator: "Confess, count, you are inventing." "Madame, I am repeating like a parrot all the stories related to me by different Englishmen.

To my shame I am compelled to say, I am as exact as a copy." "Charles II.

would have died before he could have endured all that." Louis XIV.

raised his intelligent and proud head.

"Madame," said he, in a grave tone, still partaking something of the timid child, "monsieur le cardinal will tell you that during my minority the affairs of France were in jeopardy,--and that if I had been older, and obliged to take sword in hand, it would sometimes have been for the purpose of procuring the evening meal." "Thanks to God," said the cardinal, who spoke for the first time, "your majesty exaggerates, and your supper has always been ready with that of your servants." The king colored.
"Oh!" cried Philip, inconsiderately, from his place, and without ceasing to admire himself,--"I recollect once, at Melun, the supper was laid for nobody, and that the king ate two-thirds of a slice of bread, and abandoned to me the other third." The whole assembly, seeing Mazarin smile, began to laugh.