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.

He therefore set out the next morning, without seeing M.de Chamillard again.
Cavalier on arriving at Macon found that his comrades had had a visit from M.d'Aygaliers, who had come again to Paris, in the hope of obtaining more from the king than M.de Villars could or would grant.
Cavalier, without telling his comrades of the strange manner in which the king had received him, gave them to understand that he was beginning to fear that not only would the promises they had received be broken, but that some strange trick would be played upon them.
Thereupon these men, whose chief and oracle he had been for so long, asked him what they ought to do; Cavalier replied that if they would follow him, their best course and his would be to take the first opportunity of gaining the frontier and leaving the country.