'My thoughts would be expensive at that price, duc, and the pistoles will not buy Couronne.' '_Morbleu!_ Then name your own price. 'Tis just such a horse as that I have dreamed of to lead the King's House against M. de Savoye.' 'I may need her for the Italian war myself, monseigneur. No, Couronne is not for sale. She bears too heavy a stake for us to part.' Bellegarde looked at me curiously on my speech, and I half repented of my last words; but he said no more, and a second or so later we were past the Magasins and approaching the main entrance to the Louvre. The sight before us was gay beyond description. All the good commons of Paris had thronged to see the court re-open, and to catch a glimpse, and perhaps a wave of the hand, from the King, whom they now loved with their whole hearts. They came all in their gayest, and as the cheerful crowd swayed backwards and forwards beyond the long line of guards that kept the entrance to the palace free, it was for all the world like a bank of flowers stirred by the wind. But it was not the commons alone that had gathered there. From within the palace itself we caught the continual flashes of silvered armour, the sheen of silk and satin, the waving of plumes and the glitter of jewels, and, far as the eye could stretch along the river-face, there was an apparently endless cavalcade approaching the Louvre. In that great heaving crowd, wherein all the strength of France was gathered, we saw, as the wind caught the banners and spread them to the sunlight, that there was hardly a house in France but was represented here, from the lordly seigneurs of Champagne and Guienne, with their splendid followings, to the poor knights of Gascony and Bearn, who had not a tower that was not in ruins amongst them, and could barely maintain the brace of starveling lackeys that rode at the heels of each of these lean-pursed but long-sworded gentlemen. Here one saw the white shield of Couci, the lilies of Conde, the griffins of Epernon, there the cross of Croye, the star of d'Andelot, the red hand of d'Auvergne, and the black wolves on the golden shield of La Roche-Guyon, the proudest lord of Burgundy, who traced his descent far back into the mists beyond the middle ages. Absorbed as I was in my own troubles, I could not restrain a feeling of pride that rose within me at the scene. Down through that roaring crowd that cheered them again and again as they passed, it was as if all the old historic names of France had gathered to do honour to the day. And I felt, too, as I looked at the endless sea of heads, that this was no longer a France at murderous war with itself, but a united and powerful nation that was being led onwards to its destiny by the strong hand of a man who had quenched a fratricidal struggle; and for the moment I forgot how small he could be who was yet so great.