Handy -book of Literary Curiosities
Book Description
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1892. Excerpt: ... From the cradle to the grave, indeed, Louis XIV was surrounded by flatterers. In the Imperial Library of St. Petersburg there is a sheet of paper, on which as a boy he had transcribed some ...
MoreThis historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1892. Excerpt: ... From the cradle to the grave, indeed, Louis XIV was surrounded by flatterers. In the Imperial Library of St. Petersburg there is a sheet of paper, on which as a boy he had transcribed some half a dozen times, in a large unformed hand, a lesson set by his master, "Homage is due to kings; they do what they like." And in his old age, complaining at dinner of the inconvenience of having no teeth, "Teeth?" cried the Cardinal d'Estrees: "who has any?" When he asked Mignard, who was painting his portrait for the tenth time, whether he did not look older, the artist adroitly said, "Sire, it is true that I see some more victories on the forehead of your majesty." Then there is the sublime mot of the Abbe de Polignac, when the king kindly expressed his fears that the courtier was being soaked through. "Sire," replied the abbe, "the rain of Marly does not wet!" But the story is sometimes told in another way, and the phrase put into the mouth of the king himself as a rebuke to a cardinal who followed him grudgingly through a shower. Madame de Remusat tells us in her Memoires that though she found no one sufficiently courtier-like to maintain that it did not rain when Napoleon presented the eagles at the Champ de Mars, shortly after his coronation, she met innumerable people who declared that they had not been wetted. She neglects, however, to record Napoleon's philosophic comment to his Minister of Finance, as the rain came pouring down in barrels, reducing silks and velvets to pulp: There's work for the weavers of Lyons!" When the Grand Monarque asked what time it was (" Quelle heure est-il?"), he was answered, "Whatever time your majesty desires" (" II est l'heure que Votre Majeste desire"). A very curious modern parallel to this famous phrase occurs, by the way, ...
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