millions that, in the workshop or furrowfield, grind fore-done at the wheel of Labour, like haltered gin-horses, if blind so much the quieter?  Or they that in the Bicetre Hospital, ‘eight to a bed,’ lie waiting their manumission?  Dim are those heads of theirs, dull stagnant those hearts:  to them the great Sovereign is known mainly as the great Regrater of Bread.  If they hear of his sickness, they will answer with a dull Tant pis pour lui; or with the question, Will he die?

Yes, will he die? that is now, for all France, the grand question, and hope; whereby alone the King’s sickness has still some interest.

Chapter 1.1.II.

Realised Ideals.

Such a changed France have we; and a changed Louis.  Changed, truly; and further than thou yet seest!—­To the eye of History many things, in that sick-room of Louis, are now visible, which to the Courtiers there present were invisible.  For indeed it is well said, ’in every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing.’  To Newton and to Newton’s Dog Diamond, what a different pair of Universes; while the painting on the optical retina of both was, most likely, the same!  Let the Reader here, in this sick-room of Louis, endeavour to look with the mind too.

Time was when men could (so to speak) of a given man, by nourishing and decorating him with fit appliances, to the due pitch, make themselves a King, almost as the Bees do; and what was still more to the purpose, loyally obey him when made.  The man so nourished and decorated, thenceforth named royal, does verily bear rule; and is said, and even thought, to be, for example, ‘prosecuting conquests in Flanders,’ when he lets himself like luggage be carried thither:  and no light luggage; covering miles of road.  For he has his unblushing Chateauroux, with her band-boxes and rouge-pots, at his side; so that, at every new station, a wooden gallery must be run up between their lodgings.  He has not only his Maison-Bouche, and Valetaille without end, but his very Troop of Players, with their pasteboard coulisses, thunder-barrels, their kettles, fiddles, stage-wardrobes, portable larders (and chaffering and quarrelling enough); all mounted in wagons, tumbrils, second-hand chaises,—­sufficient not to conquer Flanders, but the patience of the world.  With such a flood of loud jingling appurtenances does he lumber along, prosecuting his conquests in Flanders; wonderful to behold.  So nevertheless it was and had been:  to some solitary thinker it might seem strange; but even to him inevitable, not unnatural.