With silken streamers the young Phoebus fanning.
. . . . . .
. . . behold,
And follow."

With this poetic movement he traverses time and space, and transports at
will the attentive assembly to the theatre of his sublime scenes.

We shall avail ourselves of the same privilege, though without the same
genius. No more than he shall we seat ourselves upon the tripod of the
unities, but merely casting our eyes upon Paris and the old dark palace
of the Louvre, we will at once pass over the space of two hundred leagues
and the period of two years.

Two years! what changes may they not have upon men, upon their families,
and, above all, in that great and so troublous family of nations, whose
long alliances a single day suffices to destroy, whose wars are ended by
a birth, whose peace is broken by a death! We ourselves have beheld
kings returning to their dwelling on a spring day; that same day a vessel
sailed for a voyage of two years. The navigator returned. The kings
were seated upon their thrones; nothing seemed to have taken place in his
absence, and yet God had deprived those kings of a hundred days of their
reign.

But nothing was changed for France in 1642, the epoch to which we turn,
except her fears and her hopes. The future alone had changed its aspect.
Before again beholding our personages, we must contemplate at large the
state of the kingdom.

The powerful unity of the monarchy was rendered still more imposing by