Cavalier's knees knocked together and his face flushed.
The king mounted the stairs step by step with his usual dignity, stopping from time to time to say a word or make a sign with head or hand.

Behind him, two steps lower, came Chamillard, moving and stopping as the king moved and stopped, and answering the questions which His Majesty put to him in a respectful but formal and precise manner.
Reaching the level on which Cavalier stood, the king stopped under pretext of pointing out to Chamillard a new ceiling which Le Brun had just finished, but really to have a good look at the singular man who had maintained a struggle against two marshals of France and treated with a third on equal terms.

When he had examined him quite at his ease, he turned to Chamillard, pretending he had only just caught sight of the stranger, and asked: "Who is this young gentleman ?" "Sire," answered the minister, stepping forward to present him to the king, "this is Colonel Jean Cavalier." "Ah yes," said the king contemptuously, "the former baker of Anduze!" And shrugging his shoulders disdainfully, he passed on.
Cavalier on his side had, like Chamillard, taken a step forward, when the scornful answer of the great king changed him into a statue.

For an instant he stood motionless and pale as death, then instinctively he laid his hand on his sword, but becoming conscious that he was lost if he remained an instant longer among these people, whom not one of his motions escaped, although they pretended to despise him too much to be aware of his presence, he dashed down the staircase and through the hall, upsetting two or three footmen who were in his way, hurried into the garden, ran across it at full speed, and regaining his room at the hotel, threw himself on the floor, where he rolled like a maniac, uttering cries of rage, and cursing the hour when, trusting to the promises of M.de Villars, he had abandoned the mountains where he was as much a king as Louis XIV at Versailles.

The same evening he received orders to leave Paris and rejoin his regiment at Macon.