"/Floruit/ sine fructu;
/Defloruit/ sine luctu."

"He flowered without fruit, and faded without regret."--ED.


As we approached the end of our destination, we talked of the King. On
this subject he was jealously cautious. But I gleaned from him, despite
of his sagacity, that it was high time to make all use of one's
acquaintance with Madame de Maintenon that one could be enabled to do;
and that it was so difficult to guess the exact places in which power
would rest after the death of the old King that supineness and silence
made at present the most profound policy.

As we alighted from the carriage and I first set my foot within the
palace, I could not but feel involuntarily yet powerfully impressed with
the sense of the spirit of the place. I was in the precincts of that
mighty court which had gathered into one dazzling focus all the rays of
genius which half a century had emitted,--the court at which time had
passed at once from the morn of civilization into its full noon and
glory,--the court of Conde and Turenne, of Villars and of
Tourville,--the court where, over the wit of Grammont, the profusion of
Fouquet, the fatal genius of Louvois (fatal to humanity and to France),
Love, real Love, had not disdained to shed its pathos and its truth, and
to consecrate the hollow pageantries of royal pomp, with the tenderness,
the beauty, and the repentance of La Valliere. Still over that scene
hung the spells of a genius which, if artificial and cold, was also
vast, stately, and magnificent,--a genius which had swelled in the rich
music of Racine, which had raised the nobler spirit and the freer