"Were I but strong!" he at times exclaimed in rage. "Might I but love, suffer, weave into my life the thread of a romantic adventure. But this despicable body!--this diseased and impotent flesh!--" His eyes wandered from the garden view to the objects of art around him. He enjoyed in them the fruition of artistic beauty rescued from voracious Time. They seemed to smile to him like the choicest friends. In these and such as these he found more real contentment than in aught else. "I am very like an Athenian, or a Roman contemporary of Horace," he assured himself complacently. Correct lines and classic symmetry transported him so much that the vision was at times inspired within him of his own person restored to health, with rich and virile blood coursing through his veins. Suddenly his face grew haggard and his head fell on the back of the chair, a shadow obscuring his Bourbonic countenance, so like that of his decapitated brother, though it lacked the placid benevolence of that unfortunate monarch's face encircled in curls which terminated in a cue. In the reigning Louis's face that benevolent look was replaced by an expression of sordid indifference or of caustic irony. The king's collapse had been caused by the sight of a man standing in the garden opposite the window, near the statue: "A wrestler preparing for the Combat." The man's keen eye was fixed upon the monarch. He was of a weazened type and might be of any age between eighty and ninety, for there is a limit beyond which the passage of time is not apparent in the human form. His head shone like burnished silver, his bristly eye-brows surmounted prophetic eyes and his knotty hands, upon which his chin was leaning, rested on a rough staff. His garb was that of the provinces--where tradition and superstition held sway and druids still sharpened the ax beneath the trees--loose gaskins, wooden shoes, woolen scarf and embroidered jacket over a white vest. As a whole the attire was picturesque and the passers-by turned to gaze attentively at the old man, an ideal model for a painter wishing to personify the past. The king, attracted by the strange figure, prolonged his stare, then suddenly turned his eyes upon the pompous usher and the Superintendent of Police, who advanced making a profound salutation. After taking the seat designated by the monarch, Lecazes inquired solicitously: "Does your Majesty improve in health?" "The vulture does not tire of preying upon me. Believe me, Baron, the lives of all men make up equal totals. To reign, having disabled limbs, or to break stone, having nimble ones--'tis a balance. No, I am in error. To break stone, under such conditions, is preferable. After all, the breakers of stone can make love and be merry, while an invalid like me--Poor Zoe! poor Countess! 'Tis true that she and I adore genius and beauty. Who can deprive us of those joys?" The baron's facial muscles assented. "What of the English doctor?" he asked.