But at the moment he was about to open it, there was a great noise in the gallery, the ante-chamber, and the court.
"Ah, ah," said Louis XIV., who doubtless knew the meaning of that triple noise.

"How could I say there was but one king in France! I was mistaken, there are two." As he spoke or thought thus, the door opened, and the superintendent of finances, Fouquet, appeared before his nominal master.

It was he who made the noise in the ante-chamber, it was his horse that made the noise in the courtyard.

In addition to all this, a loud murmur was heard along his passage, which did not die away till some time after he had passed.
It was this murmur which Louis XIV.

regretted so deeply not hearing as he passed, and dying away behind him.
"He is not precisely a king, as you fancy," said Anne of Austria to her son; "he is only a man who is much too rich--that is all." Whilst saying these words, a bitter feeling gave to these words of the queen a most hateful expression; whereas the brow of the king, calm and self-possessed, on the contrary, was without the slightest wrinkle.