Chapter XVII.

High Treason.
The ungovernable fury which took possession of the king at the sight and at the perusal of Fouquet's letter to La Valliere by degrees subsided into a feeling of pain and extreme weariness.

Youth, invigorated by health and lightness of spirits, requiring soon that what it loses should be immediately restored--youth knows not those endless, sleepless nights which enable us to realize the fable of the vulture unceasingly feeding on Prometheus.

In cases where the man of middle life, in his acquired strength of will and purpose, and the old, in their state of natural exhaustion, find incessant augmentation of their bitter sorrow, a young man, surprised by the sudden appearance of misfortune, weakens himself in sighs, and groans, and tears, directly struggling with his grief, and is thereby far sooner overthrown by the inflexible enemy with whom he is engaged.

Once overthrown, his struggles cease.