KING. "'Do you know who taught me the little I know? It was your old Marshal Traun: that was a man, that one.--You spoke of the French: do they make progress?'
EGO. "'They are capable of everything in time of war, Sire: but in Peace,--their chiefs want them to be what they are not, what they are not capable of being.'
KING. "'How, then; disciplined? They were so in the time of M. de Turenne.'
EGO. "'Oh, it isn't that. They were not so in the time of M. de Vendome, and they went on gaining battles. But it is now wished that they become your Apes and ours; and that does n't suit them.'
KING. "'Perhaps so: I have said of their busy people (FAISEURS,'
St. Germains and Army-Reformers), 'that they would fain sing without knowing music.'
EGO. "'Oh, that is true! But leave them their natural notes;profit by their bravery, their alertness (LEGERETE), by their very faults,--I believe their confusion might confuse their enemies sometimes.'
KING. "'Well, yes, doubtless, if you have something to support them with.'
EGO. "'Just so, Sire,--some Swiss and Germans.'
KING. "''T is a brave and amiable nation, the French; one can't help loving them:--but, MON DIEU, what have they made of their Men of Letters; and what a tone has now come up among them!
Voltaire, for example, had an excellent tone. D'Alembert, whom Iesteem in many respects, is too noisy, and insists too much on producing effect in society:--was it the Men of Letters that gave the Court of Louis XIV. its grace, or did they themselves acquire it from the many amiable persons they found there? He was the Patriarch of Kings, that one [in a certain sense, your Majesty!].
In his lifetime a little too much good was said of him; but a great deal too much ill after his death.'
EGO. "'A King of France, Sire, is always the Patriarch of Clever People (PATRIARCHE DES GENS D'ESPRIT:' You do not much mean this, Monsieur? You merely grin it from the teeth outward?)KING. "'That is the bad Number to draw: they are n't worth a doit (NE VALENT PAS LE DIABLE, these GENS D'ESPRIT) at Governing.
Better be Patriarch of the Greek Church, like my sister the Empress of Russia! That brings her, and will bring, advantages. There's a religion for you; comprehending many Countries and different Nations! As to our poor Lutherans, they are so few, it is not worth while being their Patriarch.'
EGO. "'Nevertheless, Sire, if one join to them the Calvinists, and all the little bastard Sects, it would not be so bad a post.
[The King appeared to kindle at this; his eyes were full of animation. But it did not last when I said:] If the Kaiser were Patriarch of the Catholics, that too wouldn't be a bad place.'
KING. "'There, there: Europe divided into Three Patriarchates.
I was wrong to begin; you see where that leads us: Messieurs, our dreams are not those of the just, as M. le Regent used to say.
If Louis XIV. were alive, he would thank us.'
"All these patriarchal ideas, possible and impossible to realize, made him, for an instant, look thoughtful, almost moody.
KING. "'Louis XIV., possessing more judgment than cleverness (ESPRIT), looked out more for the former quality than for the latter. It was men of genius that he wanted, and found. It could not be said that Corneille, Bossuet, Racine and Conde were people of the clever sort (DES HOMMES D'ESPRIT).'
EGO. "'On the whole, there is that in the Country which really deserves to be happy, It is asserted that your Majesty has said, If one would have a fine dream, one must--'
KING. "'Yes, it is true,--be King of France.'
EGO. "'If Francis I. and Henri IV. had come into the world after your Majesty, they would have said, "be King of Prussia."'
KING. "'Tell me, pray, is there no citable Writer left in France?'
"This made me laugh; the King asked the reason. I told him, He reminded me of the RUSSE A PARIS, that charming little piece of verse of M. de Voltaire's; and we remembered charming things out of it, which made us both laugh. He said,KING. "'I have sometimes heard the Prince de Conti spoken of: what sort of man is he?'
EGO. "'He is a man composed of twenty or thirty men. He is proud, he is affable,'"--he is fiddle, he is diddle (in the seesaw epigrammatic way, for a page or more); and is not worth pen and ink from us, since the time old Marshal Traun got us rid of him,--home across the Rhine, full speed, with Croats sticking on his skirts.
[Supra, viii. 475.]
"This portrait seemed to amuse the King. One had to captivate him by some piquant detail; without that, he would escape you, give you no time to speak. The success generally began by the first words, no matter how vague, of any conversation; these he found means to make interesting; and what, generally, is mere talk about the weather became at once sublime; and one never heard anything vulgar from him. He ennobled everything; and the examples of Greeks and Romans, or of modern Generals, soon dissipated everything of what, with others, would have remained trivial and commonplace.
"'Have you ever,' said he, 'seen such a rain as yesterday's? Your orthodox Catholics will say, "That comes of having a man without religion among us: what are we to do with this cursed (MAUDIT)King; a Protestant at lowest?" for I really think I brought you bad luck. Your soldiers would be saying, "Peace we have; and still is this devil of a man to trouble us!"'
EGO. "'Certainly, if your Majesty was the cause, it is very bad.
Such a thing is only permitted to Jupiter, who has always good reasons for everything; and it would have been in his fashion, after destroying the one set by fire, to set about destroying the others by water. However, the fire is at an end; and I did not expect to revert to it.'