There, seated before a walnut table he had brought with him from
Hartwell, and to which, from one of those fancies not uncommon to
great people, he was particularly attached, the king, Louis XVIII., was
carelessly listening to a man of fifty or fifty-two years of age, with
gray hair, aristocratic bearing, and exceedingly gentlemanly attire,
and meanwhile making a marginal note in a volume of Gryphius's rather
inaccurate, but much sought-after, edition of Horace--a work which
was much indebted to the sagacious observations of the philosophical
monarch.
"You say, sir"--said the king.
"That I am exceedingly disquieted, sire."
"Really, have you had a vision of the seven fat kine and the seven lean
kine?"
Page annotations:
Add a page annotation: