in an electric chain, flashed over me! I still paused on the threshold
of those stately halls which Nature herself had been conquered to rear!
Where, through the whole earth, could I find so meet a symbol for the
character and the name which that sovereign would leave to posterity as
this palace itself afforded? A gorgeous monument of regal state raised
from a desert; crowded alike with empty pageantries and illustrious
names; a prodigy of elaborate artifice, grand in its whole effect, petty
in its small details; a solitary oblation to a splendid selfishness, and
most remarkable for the revenues which it exhausted and the poverty by
which it is surrounded!

Fleuri, with his usual urbanity--an urbanity that, on a great scale,
would have been benevolence--had hitherto indulged me in my emotions: he
now laid his hand upon my arm, and recalled me to myself. Before I
could apologize for my abstraction, the Bishop was accosted by an old
man of evident rank, but of a countenance more strikingly demonstrative
of the little cares of a mere courtier than any I ever beheld. "What
news, Monsieur le Marquis?" said Fleuri, smiling.

"Oh! the greatest imaginable! the King talks of receiving the Danish
minister on /Thursday/, which, you know, is his day of /domestic
business/! What /can/ this portend? Besides," and here the speaker's
voice lowered into a whisper, "I am told by the Duc de la Rochefoucauld
that the king intends, out of all ordinary rule and practice, to take
physic to-morrow: I can't believe it; no, I positively can't; but don't
let this go further!"

"Heaven forbid!" answered Fleuri, bowing, and the courtier passed on to
whisper his intelligence to others. "Who's that gentleman?" I asked.