“You did what?”

“I answered, sire, that he might.”

King Louis flushed with anger, and he caught up the tongs from the grate with a motion as though he would have struck his minister with them.  Madame sprang from her chair, and laid her hand upon his arm with a soothing gesture.  He threw down the tongs again, but his eyes still flashed with passion as he turned them upon Louvois.

“How dared you?” he cried.

“But, sire—­”

“How dared you, I say?  What!  You venture to answer such a message without consulting me!  How often am I to tell you that I am the state—­ I alone; that all is to come from me; and that I am answerable to God only?  What are you?  My instrument! my tool!  And you venture to act without my authority!”

“I thought that I knew your wishes, sire,” stammered Louvois, whose haughty manner had quite deserted him, and whose face was as white as the ruffles of his shirt.

“You are not there to think about my wishes, sir.  You are there to consult them and to obey them.  Why is it that I have turned away from my old nobility, and have committed the affairs of my kingdom to men whose names have never been heard of in the history of France, such men as Colbert and yourself?  I have been blamed for it.  There was the Duc de St. Simon, who said, the last time that he was at the court, that it was a bourgeois government.  So it is.  But I wished it to be so, because I knew that the nobles have a way of thinking for themselves, and I ask for no thought but mine in the governing of France.  But if my bourgeois are to receive messages and give answers to embassies, then indeed I am to be pitied.  I have marked you of late, Louvois.  You have grown beyond your station.  You take too much upon yourself.  See to it that I have not again to complain to you upon this matter.”

The humiliated minister sat as one crushed, with his chin sunk upon his breast.  The king muttered and frowned for a few minutes, but the cloud cleared gradually from his face, for his fits of anger were usually as short as they were fierce and sudden.

“You will detain that messenger, Louvois,” he said at last, in a calm voice.

“Yes, sire.”

“And we shall see at the council meeting to-morrow that a fitting reply be sent to Lord Sunderland.  It would be best perhaps not to be too free with our promises in the matter.  These English have ever been a thorn in our sides.  If we could leave them among their own fogs with such a quarrel as would keep them busy for a few years, then indeed we might crush this Dutch prince at our leisure.  Their last civil war lasted ten years, and their next may do as much.  We could carry our frontier to the Rhine long ere that.  Eh, Louvois?”

“Your armies are ready, sire, on the day that you give the word.”

“But war is a costly business.  I do not wish to have to sell the court plate, as we did the other day.  How are the public funds?”