What his Majesty King Louis XIV. was at the Age of Twenty-Two



It has been seen, by the account we have endeavored to give
of it, that the entree of King Louis XIV. into the city of
Blois had been noisy and brilliant his young majesty had
therefore appeared perfectly satisfied with it.

On arriving beneath the porch of the Castle of the States,
the king met, surrounded by his guards and gentlemen, with
S. A. R. the duke, Gaston of Orleans, whose physiognomy,
naturally rather majestic, had borrowed on this solemn
occasion a fresh luster and a fresh dignity. On her part,
Madame, dressed in her robes of ceremony, awaited, in the
interior balcony, the entrance of her nephew. All the
windows of the old castle, so deserted and dismal on
ordinary days, were resplendent with ladies and lights.

It was then to the sound of drums, trumpets, and vivats,
that the young king crossed the threshold of that castle in
which, seventy-two years before, Henry III. had called in
the aid of assassination and treachery to keep upon his head
and in his house a crown which was already slipping from his
brow, to fall into another family.

All eyes, after having admired the young king, so handsome
and so agreeable, sought for that other king of France, much
otherwise king than the former, and so old, so pale, so