Showing How Louis, on His Part, Had Passed the Time from Ten to Half-Past Twelve at Night.

When the king left the apartments of the maids of honor, he found Colbert awaiting him to take directions for the next day’s ceremony, as the king was then to receive the Dutch and Spanish ambassadors.

Louis XIV. had serious causes of dissatisfaction with the Dutch; the States had already been guilty of many mean shifts and evasions with France, and without perceiving or without caring about the chances of a rupture, they again abandoned the alliance with his Most Christian Majesty, for the purpose of entering into all kinds of plots with Spain. Louis XIV. at his accession, that is to say, at the death of Cardinal Mazarin, had found this political question roughly sketched out; the solution