“Sire,” said Louis XIV., with a sudden impulse, and raising his head, “it is a million you require, or two hundred gentlemen, I think you say?”

“Sire, a million would be quite sufficient.”

“That is very little.”

“Offered to a single man it is a great deal. Convictions have been purchased at a much lower price; and I should have nothing to do but with venalities.”

“Two hundred gentlemen! Reflect! — that is little more than a single company.”

“Sire, there is in our family a tradition, and that is, that four men, four French gentlemen, devoted to my father, were near saving my father, though condemned by a parliament, guarded by an army and surrounded by a nation.”