"They must be restrained," he said. "Between them and the Carbonari the throne totters." The King turned his face with a look half quizzical, half contemptuous. "Lecazes, you talk inanities. Do you think we are to last long enough for that? Do you believe in a future for us? Better that I repeat with my great-grandfather and Pompadour, 'After us, the deluge.' Had I ambition--You well know how foreign 'tis to my nature--" Again Lecazes assumed the mellow expression, and again came to his mind words of Talleyrand, uttered many years earlier before Revolutions were dreamed of: "A king loves his crown." "Were I ambitious," resumed the monarch, "I should now be contented. But ambition is puerile. I was not born for the throne but for art--highest art! Beauty sways my soul. Poetic art rather than the prerogatives of supreme rank should have filled my life. You, who are also an artist, can understand how I am starved in my exalted station, not filled. Happiness is found in the refined pleasures of the imagination rather than in state-craft and pomp. What memory is my reign to perpetuate? I have been despoiled of the nation's conquests. I have acquired the crown by giving up thirty-six strong-holds and ten thousand cannon. Glory has turned her face and fled from me. Is the fault my own?" The baron failed to reply and the King resumed: "I do not know--not even _you_ know--how great is my joy in discovering an antique cameo, a rare edition or an Italo-Grecian vase to add to my Iliad collection. But the exercise of power does not permit me to enjoy such pleasures tranquilly. Perhaps some day I shall enjoy reigning, but at the present time I long to seclude myself in the country, surrounded by my art collections and a few witty, erudite friends--above all, writers of verse. Those melodious youths adoring the moon from Our Lady's tower would be most entertaining if they were more deferential to the classics. I should indeed be happy in such a retreat. O how the pastoral life, eclogues and idyls allure me! I was born for the society of pagan philosophers beneath a Grecian sky and mine is a plain case of the error of Destiny. Baron, commiserate me. I am most unfortunate." "Is Your Majesty greatly tormented by your ailments?" inquired Lecazes with aptly simulated solicitude. "Greatly so. I suffer the pains of one condemned to torture. How I am racked! As I said before, Baron, to break stone is preferable." Lowering his voice, he added: "You know that one of the calumnies floating here and there for my discomfiture is that I am satirical and given to discharging arrows of cynicism, quite indiscriminately, too. They say this because I am an appreciator of Voltaire and his expose of the hypocrites of his day. I a cynic!--an unbeliever! Would that they could know what depths of faith and of tenderness are in my heart! It is not easy to be a pagan. Modern life stultifies the attempt. Behold in me an instance--"