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conjure you; leave me-these felicitations distress me.

as we are out of this-"

As soon

They looked at him with astonishment. It was at this moment that he was summoned in the king's name. Claude had remained to examine the splendors of this place, which it was little probable he would ever revisit. While crossing the chapel, Bourdaloue perceived him, and seemed at first to wish to avoid him. He hastened his pace, then slackened it, at length going straight up to him, he said:

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Claude was standing before a painting, and as he turned around in amazement, Bourdaloue repeated:

"Come, I tell you, come-do not keep me, the king is waiting. Place yourself there." It was at the door of the king's sacristy.

In the meantime, Bossuet and Monsieur de Fénélon had followed Bourdaloue. Already much surprised to see the minister in the chapel, they were naturally still more so, at what their friend had said to him, and above all, at the peculiar manner in which he had summoned him.

"What is it?" they asked Claude.

"But, gentlemen, it is rather for me to ask; I do not know." "Is it that Father Boudaloue wished to present you to the king?" "To the king! Me? Is the king there?"

"Did you not know it ?"

66

No, not at all. Present me to the king! to the king!"

He fell from the clouds, but he began to guess.

"Well, my father," the king had said to Bourdaloue, in a much more easy tone than one would have expected to hear already, "you ought to be satisfied, it seems to me. Mme. de Montespan is at Clagny—”

Dangeau somewhere. Precisely as if the king had been the only one to feel it, or as if the earthquake had been performed in his honor.

"Yes, sire. But God would be still better satisfied if Clagny were seventy leagues from Versailles."*

"What! you distrust me still?”

What should he answer? Happily the king did not allow him time.

"I thank you for your sermon," he resumed.

Under this apparent sincerity which he himself perhaps believed sincere, it was the old man which returned. The real subject of his satisfaction was not that the sermon had been good or powerful; it was, alas! that it was finished, and that the trial

was over.

And as Bourdaloue bowed with a somewhat incredulous air; "yes," continued the king, "yes,-I thank you. I never heard any thing so-so- Never-The close particularly-" Bourdaloue started.

"But calm yourself," resumed the king, who began to remark his agitation, and grew firmer in consequence. "Do I look displeased?"

And he did not look so, in fact.

"It was your duty-you have fulfilled it. But what a discourse! what eloquence !"

A fresh movement; fresh praises. The king had evidently resumed the upper hand. He was enchanted to spend all the emotion which the sermon had caused him in praising the style, -in order not to be obliged to speak again of the subject; and he took, or feigned to take every movement of Bourdaloue for modesty, and only praised him the more.

"You must give it to me," he said at length; "you must give me this peroration. I wish to read it again. I wish-"

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"This portion of the sermon

"Well ?"

"Is not by me."

"And by whom, then?

Bourdaloue went quickly to the door.-"Come,” he said. "Come-"

"How !" cried the king, on perceiving Bossuet; "it was by Monsieur de Condom !-"

"No, sire, by Monsieur Claude. And I have the honor to present him to you."

Ten years afterwards, Louis XIV. sent Claude a purse of an hundred louis, and one of his valets-de-chambre to serve him. It is true that it was the next day after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and that Claude was quitting France never to

return.

TWO EVENINGS

AT THE HOTEL DE RAMBOUILLET.

MARCH 1644.

Ir is said that a young abbé who promised to be a great preacher, was introduced at the hotel de Rambouillet by the Marquis de Feuquières. It was proposed to him to extemporize a sermon on a text chosen at hazard. He accepted; but the evening being too far advanced, the thing was put off till the next day. At this point we commence the relation of the following occurrences.*

* Although this narrative, published in 1839, has been reprinted by a number of journals, the author thought that the readers of “The Preacher and the King," would perhaps be glad to find it here. 1644 should precede 1675, but as the two works are entirely distinct, there was no impropriety in placing the most important first."

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