Part 36 (1/2)
The ungovernable fury which took possession of the king at the sight and at the perusal of Fouquet's letter to La Valliere by degrees subsided into a feeling of pain and extrehtness of spirits, requiring soon that what it loses should be immediately restored--youth knows not those endless, sleepless nights which enable us to realize the fable of the vulture unceasingly feeding on Prometheus In cases where the th of will and purpose, and the old, in their state of natural exhaustion, find incessant aug man, surprised by the sudden appearance of roans, and tears, directly struggling with his grief, and is thereby far sooner overthrown by the inflexible eneles cease Louis could not hold out more than a few minutes, at the end of which he had ceased to clench his hands, and scorch in fancy with his looks the invisible objects of his hatred; he soon ceased to attack with his violent imprecations not M Fouquet alone, but even La Valliere herself; from fury he subsided into despair, and from despair to prostration After he had thrown himself for a few minutes to and fro convulsively on his bed, his nerveless aruidly on his pillow; his limbs, exhausted with excessive eitated by muscular contractions; while frohs still issued Morpheus, the tutelary deity of the aparter and reconciled by his tears, showered down upon hi poppies hich his hands are ever filled; so presently the monarch closed his eyes and fell asleep Then it seeht and gentle, which raises the body above the couch, and the soul above the earth--it seemed to hi, looked at hihtly, and moved to and fro in the dome above the sleeper; that the crowd of terrible dreaether in his brain, and which were interrupted for a ainst the mouth, and in an attitude of deep and absorbed h, too, thishi at his own face reflected in a mirror; with the exception, however, that the face was saddened by a feeling of the profoundest pity Then it see froures and attributes painted by Lebrun became darker and darker as the distance becaular as that by which a vessel plunges beneath the waves, had succeeded to the i, and in this dreaether, seemed to recede from his vision, just as the doed genius which, with both its hand, supported the crown, see, as fast disappearing from it The bed still sunk Louis, with his eyes open, could not resist the deception of this cruel hallucination At last, as the light of the royal chaloomy, and inexplicable in its nature seeings, were visible any longer, nothing but walls of a dull gray color, which the increasing gloom made darker every moment And yet the bed still continued to descend, and after a , it reached a stratum of air, black and chill as death, and then it stopped The king could no longer see the light in his rooht of day ”I aht ”It is time to awaken from it Come! let me wake”
Every one has experienced the sensation the above remark conveys; there is hardly a person who, in the , has not said to hiht which still burns in the brain when every hu but a dream, after all” This was precisely what Louis XIV said to himself; but when he said, ”Come, come! wake up,” he perceived that not only was he already awake, but still more, that he had his eyes open also And then he looked all round hiht hand and on his left two are cloak, and the face covered with a li could look upon Louis could not help saying to himself that his dream still lasted, and that all he had to do to cause it to disappear was toaloud; he darted froround Then, addressing himself to the man who held the lamp in his hand, he said:
”What is this,of this jest?”
”It is no jest,” replied in a deep voice theto M Fouquet?” inquired the king, greatly astonished at his situation
”It ,” said the phantom; ”we are your , more iure ”If this is a comedy,” he said, ”you will tell M Fouquet that I find it unseemly and improper, and that I command it should cease”
The secondhad addressed hie stature and vast circumference He held himself erect and , sta his foot, ”you do not answer!”
”We do not answer you, iant, in a stentorian voice, ”because there is nothing to say”
”At least, tellhis aresture
”You will know by and by,” replied the man who held the lamp
”In the meantime tell me where I am”
”Look”
Louis looked all round hiure raised for the purpose, he could perceive nothing but the dalistened here and there with the sli
”No, a subterranean passage”
”Which leads--?”
”Will you be good enough to follow us?”
”I shall not stir fro
”If you are obstinate,friend,” replied the taller of the two, ”I will lift you up in my arms, and roll you up in your own cloak, and if you should happen to be stifled, why--so ed from beneath his cloak a hand of which Milo of Crotona would have envied him the possession, on the day when he had that unhappy idea of rending his last oak The king dreaded violence, for he could well believe that the two one so far with any idea of drawing back, and that they would consequently be ready to proceed to extremities, if necessary He shook his head and said: ”It seems I have fallen into the hands of a couple of assassins Move on, then”
Neither of the men answered a word to this re followed hiure closed the procession In this th, with asout of it as are to be found in the loos and turnings, during which the king heard the sound of running water _over his head_, ended at last in a long corridor closed by an iron door The figure with the lamp opened the door with one of the keys he wore suspended at his girdle, where, during the whole of the brief journey, the king had heard them rattle As soon as the door was opened and adnized the balhts He paused, hesitatingly, for a e sentinel who followed hie
”Another blow,” said the king, turning towards the one who had just had the audacity to touch his sovereign; ”what do you intend to do with the king of France?”
”Try to forget that word,” replied the man with the lamp, in a tone which as little admitted of a reply as one of the famous decrees of Minos