100 THE MAN IIT THE IRON MASK.
not intend to describe the grand banquet, at which all the royal guests were present, nor the concerts, nor the fairy- like and magical transformations and metamorphoses; it will be more than enough for our purpose to depict the countenance which the king assumed, and which, from being gay, soon wore a gloomy, constrained, and irritated expression. He remembered his own residence, royal though it was, and the mean and indifferent style of luxury which prevailed there, and which comprised only that which was merely useful for the royal wants, without being his own personal property. The large vases of the Louvre, the old furniture and plate of Henry II., of Francis I., of Louis XL, were merely historical monuments of earlier days; they were nothing but specimens of art, the relics of his prede- cessors; while with Fouquet the value of the article was as much in the workmanship as in the article itself. Fouquet eat from a gold service, which artists in his own employ had modeled and cast for himself alone. Fouquet drank wines of which the King of France did not even know the name, and drank them out of goblets each more precious than the whole royal cellar.
What, too, can be said of the apartments, the hangings, the pictures, the servants and officers, of every description, of his household? What can be said of the mode of service in which etiquette was replaced by order; stiff formality by personal unrestrained comfort; the happiness and content- ment of the guest became the supreme law of all who obeyed the host. The perfect swarm of busily engaged persons moving about noiselessly; the multitude of guests — who were, however, even less numerous than the servants who waited on them — the myriad of exquisitely prepared dishes, of gold and silver vases; the floods of dazzling light, the masses of unknown flowers of which the hothouses had been despoiled, and which were redundant with all the lux- uriance of unequaled beauty; the perfect harmony of every- thing which surrounded them, and which, indeed, was no more than the prelude of the promised fete, more than charmed all who were there, and who testified their admira- tion over and over again, not by voice or gesture, but by deep silence and rapt attention, those two languages of the courtier which acknowledge the hand of no master powerful enough to restrain them. fl
As for the king, his eyes filled with tears; he dared not *
look at the queen. Anne of Austria, whose pride, as it ever -I
had been, was superior to that of any creature breathing,
