While La Valliere's heart is breaking, the model of a finished hero is
yawning; as, on such paltry occasions, a finished hero should. Let her
heart break: a plague upon her tears and repentance; what right has she to
repent? Away with her to her convent! She goes, and the finished hero
never sheds a tear. What a noble pitch of stoicism to have reached! Our
Louis was so great, that the little woes of mean people were beyond him;
his friends died, his mistresses left him; his children, one by one, were
cut off before his eyes, and great Louis is not moved in the slightest
degree! As how, indeed, should a god be moved?...

Out of the window the king's august head was one day thrust, when old
Conde was painfully toiling up the steps of the court below. "Don't hurry
yourself, my cousin," cries Magnanimity; "one who has to carry so many
laurels can not walk fast." At which all the courtiers, lackeys,
mistresses, chamberlains, Jesuits, and scullions, clasp their hands and
burst into tears. Men are affected by the tale to this very day. For a
century and three-quarters have not all the books that speak of
Versailles, or Louis Quatorze, told the story?

"Don't hurry yourself, my cousin!" O admirable king and Christian! what a
pitch of condescension is here, that the greatest king of all the world
should go for to say anything so kind, and really tell a tottering old
gentleman, worn out with gout, age, and wounds, not to walk too fast!

What a proper fund of slavishness is there in the composition of mankind,
that histories like these, should be found to interest and awe them. Till
the world's end, most likely, this story will have its place in the
history-books, and unborn generations will read it, and tenderly be moved
by it.