four leagues apart, and I tried them this evening. They really brought me from Vaux to the Louvre in an hour and a half, so your majesty sees I have not been cheated.” The queen-mother smiled with something like secret envy. But Fouquet caught her thought. “Thus, madame,” he promptly said, “such horses are made for kings, not for subjects; for kings ought never to yield to any one in anything.”
The king looked up.
“And yet,” interrupted Anne of Austria, “you are not a king, that I know of, M. Fouquet.”
“Truly not, madame; therefore the horses only await the orders of his majesty to enter the royal stables; and if I allowed myself to try them, it was only for fear of offering to the king anything that was not positively wonderful.”