“You have studied gardens, Mr. Bernard?” (Without waiting for an answer) “They are the most charming of studies. They never grow stale. There is a book I must show you” (he shuddered inwardly as he said it), “the plans of which perpetually please me, though they are only plans. I conjure up gardens as I look at them. One is at Tarbles.... I shall never see it” (a little sadly), “but I almost seem to know it from the plans.” Bernard answered, “One must always see the plan first,” and there was silence for a full sixty seconds as they continued that mortal progress. But Bernard already trod on air for all his bulk and for all his furious shyness in such company. The king, without glancing sideways (which would have been an unkingly thing to do), gauged in his mind the distance between the place which they had reached and the point to which they must return. He decided to suggest the return. Now when the king would suggest a change of direction from one path to another, those of the Court needed no direction. Their eyes were upon the master, who was also the nation, and, for that matter, the summit of Europe; and while they said this or that, in the careful wit of their time, they saw exactly which way the royal hands waved, and which way the royal feet were turning. Not so Bernard; he had not the habit. Therefore, when the steps of Louis turned to the right, to go back towards the pavilion by the farther path, the banker almost stumbled into the king. Louis, with perfect restraint, half halted for a moment. Bernard recovered himself and murmured an apology of the middle classes. The king was too well-bred even to hear it, and the retreat upon Marly began. There was no awkwardness. The same fatuous phrases--or if not fatuous, only not fatuous because there was tradition behind the whole affair--proceeded one after the other from the lips of France; the same rare, uncertain agreement, increasingly filled with awe, came, murmured rather than spoken, from the lips of Bernard. He was returned to Desmarets. The goods were delivered. It had been a wonderful quarter of an hour for Bernard! The king had shewn him Marly! He could say all his life, and his children could say to their children, “The king himself took me all round his gardens at Marly!” To tell the full truth, he hardly knew what he had seen. He remembered six young chestnuts and a mist of poplars, and he had been conscious of a Presence always there upon his left, and that he was making history. Already Bernard was a different man. The king, lingering just enough to make the parting easy, moved off, erect, and, as it would have seemed to a very acute observer, a little less restrained. A very acute observer would have noted in the gesture of his arms and in the carriage of his body, as Louis moved off, something of relief. But only a very acute observer could have noticed this. It was the slightest of slight changes.