The girl it was who spoke most, spoke with a varying mood that charmed and angered me; even when mechanically flinging the dice I feigned not to see the eagerness, the insistence, the passion, the pleading whose murmured words fell like tears. What right had that stolid clod--clod was what Paris had called us in her streets, and the name stuck--what right had he to be so coldly unmoved, so silent, that he only answered her by a word or a gesture of denial? But she would take no denial, and with the brave spirit of a good woman returned to her pleading, pushing the petition home urgently, even strengthening her arguments by two outstretched arms, and a hand upon his shoulder. How did I know all that? Ah! every clod on which the sun strikes has a soul within it, and so I knew. Yet what did he answer? "All must be as the King wills," said he, his words roughening with distinctness as if he were not altogether sorry to be overheard. "All as the King wills, remember that, Mademoiselle. He is the potter, I the clay; he is everything, I nothing--nothing." "Nothing!" she echoed, her voice rising level with his own, "why! all France knows that you are the King in everything but name. What you say to-day, Louis says to-morrow; why deny it? Let us come to the bare truth. We desire peace, desire it with all our heart, and you say you will do nothing. Is that to be your answer, Monseigneur?" "Not that I will do nothing, but that I am nothing. If all France thinks it knows better, then all France is a fool. I sleep in his chamber, I tend him, I wait upon him, I valet him--I think no shame of that; he is the greatest King and wisest man in Christendom--I do these things, but--I am nothing. Or," he went on, after a pause, "if I am something--anything, it is because I am careful to be nothing. By a breath he undoes me, and I would not have it different. France grows great by the greatness of its Kings, and if France falls, it will be because the King has let the shadow of the people fall upon the throne." "Then--is it ruin?" I do not think she meant the words to be heard, but she was shaken out of herself, and spoke louder than she knew. "Must a great house fail that greatness may grow yet a little greater? And so little greater, so very little! Much to us, Monseigneur, ah! you can never guess how much, but so little to France. Is that your answer, ruin, ruin, ruin?" A silence fell, and I will not deny that though I still fingered the dice my breath was held to catch the reply. It came slowly, gravely, spoken as a man speaks who knows his own weight, and the weight his words cannot help but carry. "I, too, desire peace, but all is as the King wills."