influence of that long pale face, of those watery eyes, and
that languid address; so that the worthy prince was almost
certain to find the streets deserted whenever he chanced to
pass through them.

Now, on the part of the citizens of Blois this was a
culpable piece of disrespect, for Monsieur was, after the
king -- nay, even, perhaps before the king -- the greatest
noble of the kingdom. In fact, God, who had granted to Louis
XIV., then reigning, the honor of being son of Louis XIII.,
had granted to Monsieur the honor of being son of Henry IV.
It was not then, or, at least it ought not to have been, a
trifling source of pride for the city of Blois, that Gaston
of Orleans had chosen it as his residence, and he his court
in the ancient castle of its states.

But it was the destiny of this great prince to excite the
attention and admiration of the public in a very modified
degree wherever he might be. Monsieur had fallen into this
situation by habit.

It was not, perhaps, this which gave him that air of
listlessness. Monsieur had been tolerably busy in the course
of his life. A man cannot allow the heads of a dozen of his
best friends to be cut off without feeling a little
excitement, and as, since the accession of Mazarin to power,
no heads had been cut off, Monsieur's occupation was gone,
and his morale suffered from it.

The life of the poor prince was, then, very dull. After his