This man went into the King's room without notice, and without even tapping at his door. He did so, by virtue of the sovereign power of the patient over the invalid--by virtue of science over suffering humanity. The King, however, sometimes used to say, when Elysée made a very _brusque_ entrance: "_I only wish one thing, that disease may not break in on me brusquely as you do_." As a fine and acute courtier, as an old slouth-hound of the palace with a keen scent, the Prince de Maulear went to Father Elysée for the purpose of obtaining a speedy audience. "Is it you?" said the King, behind whom opened a door looking into the reception room. "Yes," said the doctor, "I wish your majesty would not pay too much attention to your Latin and study. Nothing injures the digestive organs like study, especially after meals. Mind and matter then contend, and the body is almost always overcome." "If I had to do only with my old friends, Horace and Petronius," said the King, "my digestion would be all right. Unfortunately I have found a few modern subjects well calculated to annoy Master Gaster--for the vermin of Juvenal and Persius would be honey of Hymethus compared with the bile of the books I speak of--" The King pointed out to the doctor a few open pamphlets which lay about the table. "_Norman Letters. The Man in the Grey Coat_--MINERVA," said the doctor, looking at them; "who dared to bring these books hither?" "My majesty dared. I am as good a doctor as you are, but I have more patients. I have a whole nation to cure, and to administer a tonic we must at least be aware of the debility. Look hither," said the King, "here is an antidote to poison. _The Conservative_, edited by the most learned doctors of the political faculty--by de Chateaubriand, de Bonald, de Villèle, Fiévée. Castelbajac, and a certain Abbé de Lamennais, an eloquent, sharp, and able man, I am sure, who has, though, one fault, he is a greater royalist than his King." "And may I venture to ask your majesty how the works of Etienne, Jay, Jony and company, came hither?" "Smuggled in," said Louis XVIII., with a smile; "F----, one of my _valets de chambre_, whom I have placed at the head of what I call my secret ministry, brings them to me. The fellow has taste. He said to me the other day: '_I have something devilish good here. The scoundrels do not spare your majesty_.' But," continued the King, "no man can be great to his valet or his physician, and I will therefore confess that the works of these liberal gentlemen trouble my digestion not a little, and I wish my good friend the Duke d'Escars to bring me back that _purée de cailles truffées_, of which he is the inventor. He is the Prince of Gourmands." "Then," said Père Elysée, glad to be able thus to pass to the principal object of his visit, "I am just in time to amuse your majesty, and to announce the visit of one of your best friends--the Prince de Maulear."