"Just in time," said the King; "he is a gentleman of the old school, and has chosen _for fifty years_ to be such. He yet believes in a King of France, fully, perhaps more fully, than he does in God. He is a true enemy of the Jacobins and Revolutionists. Tell him to come in, doctor, and we will be able to bear up against the attacks of the authors of those books." The doctor soon brought the Prince de Maulear, and then left. "Come in, my dear Prince," said the King; "you do not spoil your friends, and I see you too rarely, as I see others too frequently, to be able to forget you." Kings, however unpleasant they may be, have this analogy with the sun, all come to warm themselves by his rays. "I thank your majesty for your kind reception." "You were my friend and shared my exile." "It was a sad season," said the Prince, sitting on the chair the King pushed towards him. "Not so, Prince; then we had no cares and no enemies, above all we had no court. We were independent, calm, and happy." "Perhaps you had health, but you had no crown." "Think you that a great misfortune?" "Perhaps not to your majesty, but it was to France." "How? Does our friend the Prince de Maulear, contrary to every expectation, become a flatterer in his old age? In what part of the Tuileries did he contract that disease? Listen, my dear de Maulear. You as well as I know that _love of France_ is but a word. Once in France, people loved the King--now, though, France above all other things loves itself. This love is, if you please, egotistical, but after all it is the only real positive good in this selfish age. Mind I speak only of the owners, and therefore conservatives of the kingdom. The other portion of the kingdom, anxious at any risk to acquire, estimates the country cheaply. A few faithful hearts who welcomed me as a Messiah expected for twenty years, true and noble believers, looked on my return as the realization of their long and secret hopes. To the majority of my people the Bourbon lily has been only the olive-branch of peace purchased by twenty years of war. This peace I would not have brought back by the bayonets of the Austrians and Russians. But God, Buonaparte, and the Allies, so willed it. You see, my dear Prince, that I am not mistaken in relation to my subjects' love, and that the gems of a crown do not conceal its thorns." "The King," said M. de Maulear, "at least deigns to reckon me among the faithful subjects of whom he spoke just now?" "Yes, yes," said the King, "among the most faithful and most disinterested. When I came back, there was established a very partition of offices and places, or honors, titles, crosses and stars, in which you took no part. Now you know you are one of those to whom I could refuse nothing." "Well," said the Prince, "your majesty gives me courage to make one request, to obtain which I come hither." "Bah!" said the King, "speak out my old friend, if the matter depends on me--"