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Show A King's Ears. One night shortly before the taking of Maillezais, while d'Aubigne, as was apparently ap-parently his custom, was sleeping with M. de la Force in a room opening out of Henry's bedroom, he said to his companion, com-panion, "La Force, our master is a skinflint skin-flint and the most ungratef ul man on the face of the earth." La Force, who was half asleep, did not hear, and mutter J, "What do you say, d'Aubigne?" upon which the king, who was noted for his quickness of hearing, quietly said, "He says I am a skinflint and tho most ungrateful un-grateful man on the face of the earth." D'Aubigne felt rather sheepish, but Henry was not in the least annoyed. " The story is unfortunately not quite authentic, au-thentic, for it is only given in the notes of the early editions of the memoirs and does not appear in the manuscript. But in his history d'Aubigne relates a similar story in which when his bedfellow did not hear his remark, the king chimed in with "How deaf you are; don't you hear that he says I want to marry my sister to several brothers-in-law at once?" "Go to sleep," coolly replied d'Aubigne, "wo have plenty more things to say about you." Macmillan's Magazine. |
