Men and Women of the Eighteenth Century [pp. 63-77]

1852.3 Men anJ Women of tbe Eig~teenth Century. 67
to go to? The Marquis of Nangis took pity upon him, conducted
him straight to the court, and requested an audience of the young
king.`Sire, you behold at your feet an ill ustrio us scion of the
pretty flower-girl of Anet.'`I understand,' said Louis XIV.,`if
our sacred religion has given us innumerable brothers, our grandsire
lienry IV. has left us plenty of little cousins. This one seems to
me to have,a genteel, lively air, he is welcome; does he know anything?'`llow, sire! he is a youth of genius, sings like a bird,
writes like a notary, has the best of ideas about gardens, without
saying anything about Greek and Latin, which he has gone at tooth
and nail. But these matters I no longer care for.'`If he sings so
well,' said the king,`I will make him one of the valets of my ward
robe. lle will amuse me better than that imbecile old Desnoyers,
who can now scarcely tell one note from another.'`And have all
the gracefulness of a tiring-woman,' added the marquis.
"Till now Dufresny had kept somewhat in the background.
Louis XIV beckoned him to advance in front of his arm.chair.
`Your name?' demanded he.`Some say Charles I~ivie're, others,
Charles Dufresny; for my part, to accommodate both parties, I call
myself Reviere or Dufresny, if it please your majesty.'`What is
the name of your family?'`One or the other, sire, but what difference does it make? Who in this world would dare to say with assurance, I know whence I came, I know whither I am going 2
iluman vanity has worked away for a long time at genealogies;
they are a kind of perspectives, whose beauty consists in displaying
a long gallery of por[raits, feebler ia colour, and more vague in design, the more distant they are placed. Besides, the point of observation being almost always vague and undetermined, allows us to
imagine that we ~ee faces in the distance which not even the eye of
a lynx could discover. Those who wish to stretch beyond their
eyesight, in their search after family, think they discover in the fogs
of antiquity the ~gnres of ancestors, of forms as symmetrical as if
~fichael Angelo himself had moulded them; but they see thena
only as the forms of men, horses, or spectres, are sometimes seen in
the clouds.'`Marvellous well!" said Louis XIV.,`a capital lecture
on blazonry, which would drive to despair many a one who pesters
me with his vain titles.'`Thus,' continued Dufresny,`it only depends upon myself to discover crowned heads in the distant fogs,
but there is no trouble in that. What is more certain is, that I
come in a straight line from God. j have that in common with
plenty of others, who may seek some~hing better if it amuses them.~
Louis XIV. slightly bit his lip; he had really laid aside his majesty
and pride for an instant, but these two pearls of the crown, as Benserade calls them, suddenly re-~ppeared in spite of himself. llow
could he, who called himself Louis XIV., not be irritated at such
audacious words from a beggarly poet of some sixteen years? When