CHAPTER X
THE SMALL CABINET OF THE TUILERIES
E will leave Villefort on the road to Paris, traveling with all speed, and, penetrating the two or three apartments which precede it, enter the small cabinet of the Tuileries with the arched window, so well known as having been the favorite cabinet of Napoleon and Louis XVIIL, as also that of Louis Philippe. There, in this closet, seated before a walnut-tree table he had brought with him from Hartwell, and to which, from one of those fancies not uncommon to great people, he was particularly attached, the king, Louis XVIII., was carelessly listening to a man of fifty or fifty-two years of age, with gray hairs, aristocratic bearing, and exceedingly gentlemanly attire, whilst he was making a note in a volume of Horace, Gryphius's edition, — a bad one, but precious, — which was much indebted to the sagacious observations of the philosophical monarch.
"You say, sir,———"said the king.
"That I am exceedingly disquieted, sire."
"Really, have you had a visit of the seven fat kine and seven lean kine?"
"No, sire, for that would only betoken for us seven years of plenty and seven years of scarcity; and with a king as full of foresight as your majesty, scarcity is not a thing to be feared."
"Then of what other scourge are you afraid, my dear Blacas?"
"Sire, I have every reason to believe that a storm is brewing in the south."
"Well, my dear duke," replied Louis XVIII., "I think you are wrongly informed, and know positively that, on the contrary, it is very fine weather in that direction."
Man of ability as he was, Louis XVIII. liked a pleasant jest.
"Sire," continued M. de Blacas, "if it only be to re-assure a faithful
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