majesty to ask of me something of importance, even a sacrifice; but whatever it may be that you ask me, I am ready to set your heart at rest by granting it, my dear sire.”

“Well, this is what brings me here,” said the king, with a beating of the heart that had no equal except the beating of the heart of the minister; “I have just received a visit from my brother, the king of England.” Mazarin bounded in his bed as if he had been put in relation with a Leyden jar or a voltaic pile, at the same time that a surprise, or rather a manifest disappointment, inflamed his features with such a blaze of anger, that Louis XIV., little diplomatist as he was, saw that the minister had hoped to hear something else.

“Charles II.?” exclaimed Mazarin, with a hoarse