reestablishment of his health, and ordered the court to prepare for a
grand hunting party to be given at Chambord--a royal domain, whither his
brother, the Duc d'Orleans, prayed him to return.

This beautiful abode was the favorite retreat of Louis, doubtless
because, in harmony with his feelings, it combined grandeur with sadness.
He often passed whole months there, without seeing any one whatsoever,
incessantly reading and re-reading mysterious papers, writing unknown
documents, which he locked up in an iron coffer, of which he alone had
the key. He sometimes delighted in being served by a single domestic,
and thus so to forget himself by the absence of his suite as to live for
many days together like a poor man or an exiled citizen, loving to figure
to himself misery or persecution, in order the better to enjoy royalty
afterward. Another time he would be in a more entire solitude; and
having forbidden any human creature to approach him, clothed in the habit
of a monk, he would shut himself up in the vaulted chapel. There,
reading the life of Charles V, he would imagine himself at St. Just, and
chant over himself that mass for the dead which brought death upon the
head of the Spanish monarch.

But in the midst of these very chants and meditations his feeble mind was
pursued and distracted by contrary images. Never did life and the world
appear to him more fair than in such times of solitude among the tombs.
Between his eyes and the page which he endeavored to read passed
brilliant processions, victorious armies, or nations transported with
love. He saw himself powerful, combating, triumphant, adored; and if a
ray of the sun through the large windows fell upon him, suddenly rising
from the foot of the altar, he felt himself carried away by a thirst for
daylight and the open air, which led him from his gloomy retreat. But
returned to real life, he found there once more disgust and ennui, for