madness; but what is to be said? I am an old man, and I tell you here,
sire, to you, my king, things which I would cram down the throat of any
one who should dare to pronounce them before me. You have commanded me,
to pour out the bottom of my heart before you, sire, and I cast at the
feet of your majesty the pent-up indignation of thirty years, as I would
pour out all my blood, if your majesty commanded me to do so."

The king, without speaking a word, wiped the drops of cold and abundant
perspiration which trickled from his temples. The moment of silence
which followed this vehement outbreak represented for him who had spoken,
and for him who had listened, ages of suffering.

"Monsieur," said the king at length, "you spoke the word forgetfulness.
I have heard nothing but that word; I will reply, then, to it alone.
Others have perhaps been able to forget, but I have not, and the proof
is, that I remember that one day of riot, that one day when the furious
people, raging and roaring as the sea, invaded the royal palace; that one
day when I feigned sleep in my bed, one man alone, naked sword in hand,
concealed behind my curtain, watched over my life, ready to risk his own
for me, as he had before risked it twenty times for the lives of my
family. Was not the gentleman, whose name I then demanded, called M.
d'Artagnan? say, monsieur."

"Your majesty has a good memory," replied the officer, coldly.

"You see, then," continued the king, "if I have such remembrances of my
childhood, what an amount I may gather in the age of reason."

"Your majesty has been richly endowed by God," said the officer, in the
same tone.