What a proper fund of slavishness is there in the composition of mankind, that histories like these should be found to interest and awe them. Till the world’s end, most likely, this story will have its place in the history-books; and unborn generations will read it, and tenderly be moved by it. I am sure that Magnanimity went to bed that night pleased and happy, intimately convinced that he had done an action of sublime virtue, and had easy slumbers and sweet dreams,--especially if he had taken a light supper, and not too vehemently attacked his _en cas de nuit_. That famous adventure, in which the _en cas de nuit_ was brought into use, for the sake of one Poquelin, _alias_ Molière:--how often has it been described and admired? This Poquelin, though King’s _valet de chambre_, was by profession a vagrant; and as such looked coldly on by the great lords of the palace, who refused to eat with him. Majesty hearing of this, ordered his _en cas de nuit_ to be placed on the table, and positively cut off a wing, with his own knife and fork, for Poquelin’s use. O thrice happy Jean Baptiste! The King has actually sate down with him cheek by jowl, had the liver-wing of a fowl, and given Molière the gizzard; put his imperial legs under the same mahogany, _sub iisdem trabibus_. A man, after such an honour, can look for little else in this world: he has tasted the utmost conceivable earthly happiness, and has nothing to do now but to fold his arms and look up to heaven, and sing ‘Nunc dimittis’ and die. Do not let us abuse poor old Louis on account of this monstrous pride; but only lay it to the charge of the fools who believed and worshipped it. If, honest man, he believed himself to be almost a god, it was only because thousands of people had told him so--people only half liars, too; who did, in the depths of their slavish respect, admire the man almost as much as they said they did. If, when he appeared in his five-hundred-million coat, as he is said to have done, before the Siamese Ambassadors, the courtiers began to shade their eyes and long for parasols, as if this Bourbonic sun was too hot for them; indeed, it is no wonder that he should believe that there was something dazzling about his person; he had half a million of eager testimonies to this idea. Who was to tell him the truth?--Only in the last years of his life did trembling courtiers dare whisper to him, after much circumlocution, that a certain battle had been fought at a place called Blenheim, and that Eugene and Marlborough had stopped his long career of triumphs.