Of course, knowing your Majesty's mind, I answered unhesitatingly that he might." "You did what ?" "I answered, sire, that he might." King Louis flushed with anger, and he caught up the tongs from the grate with a motion as though he would have struck his minister with them.
Madame sprang from her chair, and laid her hand upon his arm with a soothing gesture.

He threw down the tongs again, but his eyes still flashed with passion as he turned them upon Louvois.
"How dared you ?" he cried.
"But, sire--" "How dared you, I say?
What! You venture to answer such a message without consulting me! How often am I to tell you that I am the state-- I alone; that all is to come from me; and that I am answerable to God only?
What are you?
My instrument! my tool! And you venture to act without my authority!" "I thought that I knew your wishes, sire," stammered Louvois, whose haughty manner had quite deserted him, and whose face was as white as the ruffles of his shirt.
"You are not there to think about my wishes, sir.

You are there to consult them and to obey them.

Why is it that I have turned away from my old nobility, and have committed the affairs of my kingdom to men whose names have never been heard of in the history of France, such men as Colbert and yourself?
I have been blamed for it.

There was the Duc de St.Simon, who said, the last time that he was at the court, that it was a bourgeois government.