Louis XI., now in the fifty-seventh year of his age, had scarcely more than three years longer to live; already he felt the coming on of death in the attacks of his mortal malady.  Delivered from his enemies; on the point of increasing the territory of France by the possessions of the Dukes of Burgundy through the marriage of the Dauphin with Marguerite, heiress of Burgundy (brought about by means of Desquerdes, commander of his troops in Flanders); having established his authority everywhere, and now meditating ameliorations in his kingdom of all kinds, he saw time slipping past him rapidly with no further troubles than those of old age.  Deceived by every one, even by the minions about him, experience had intensified his natural distrust.  The desire to live became in him the egotism of a king who has incarnated himself in his people; he wished to prolong his life in order to carry out his vast designs.

All that the common-sense of publicists and the genius of revolutions has since introduced of change in the character of monarchy, Louis XI. had thought of and devised.  Unity of taxation, equality of subjects before the law (the prince being then the law) were the objects of his bold endeavors.  On All-Saints’ eve he had gathered together the learned goldsmiths of his kingdom for the purpose of establishing in France a unity of weights and measures, as he had already established the unity of power.  Thus, his vast spirit hovered like an eagle over his empire, joining in a singular manner the prudence of a king to the natural idiosyncracies of a man of lofty aims.  At no period in our history has the great figure of Monarchy been finer or more poetic.  Amazing assemblages of contrasts! a great power in a feeble body; a spirit unbelieving as to all things here below, devoutly believing in the practices of religion; a man struggling with two powers greater than his own—­the present and the future; the future in which he feared eternal punishment, a fear which led him to make so many sacrifices to the Church; the present, namely his life itself, for the saving of which he blindly obeyed Coyctier.  This king, who crushed down all about him, was himself crushed down by remorse, and by disease in the midst of the great poem of defiant monarchy in which all power was concentrated.  It was once more the gigantic and ever magnificent combat of Man in the highest manifestation of his forces tilting against Nature.

While awaiting his dinner, a repast which was taken in those days between eleven o’clock and mid-day, Louis XI., returning from a short promenade, sat down in a huge tapestried chair near the fireplace in his chamber.  Olivier de Daim, and his doctor, Coyctier, looked at each other without a word, standing in the recess of a window and watching their master, who presently seemed asleep.  The only sound that was heard were the steps of the two chamberlains on service, the Sire de Montresor, and Jean Dufou, Sire de Montbazon,