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In half a century his race had faded into the feeble rois fainéants, degenerate by precocious debauchery, some of whom were fathers at fourteen or fifteen years of age and in their graves before they were thirty. The bow of power is to him who can bend it, and in an age when human passions are untamed, the one unpardonable vice in a king is weakness.
Men with long beards, carrying torches, measures of wine, and two drinking-cups, which they knocked together with a great noise, went along, arm in arm, shouting in chorus with rude voices an old round of the League: "Reprenons la danse; Allons, c'est assez. Le printemps commence; Les rois sont passes. "Prenons quelque treve; Nous sommes lasses. Les rois de la feve Nous ont harasses.
Selon lui, ce qui, dans les croisades précédentes, avoit fait échouer les rois de France et d'Angleterre, c'est que mal adroitement on attaquoit
"The comparison is an old one, but there is no better one to explain Villiers, for when he is not inspired his writing is very like quartz." "His great name " "His name is part of his genius. He chose it, and it has influenced his writings. Have I not heard him say, 'Car je porte en moi les richesses steriles d'un grand nombre de rois oublies." "But is he a legitimate descendant?"
Ce maitre pretendu qui leur donne des loix, Ce roi des animaux, combien a-t'il de rois?" "Yet, pleased with idle whimsies of his brain, And puffed with pride, this haughty thing would fain Be think himself the only stay and prop That holds the mighty frame of Nature up.
After Dagobert's death these mayors practically ruled in the place of the Merovingian monarchs, who became mere "do-nothing kings," rois fainéants, as the French call them. The Austrasian Mayor of the Palace, Pippin of Heristal, the great-grandfather of Charlemagne, succeeded in getting, in addition to Austrasia, both Neustria and Burgundy under his control.
Bonaparte tried upon this royal lamb the experiment of making a king wait in his antechamber: he allowed himself to be applauded at the theatre, upon the recitation of this verse: "J'ai fait des rois, madame, et n'ai pas voulu l'etre:"
Ever since the table d'hote in "Candide" Venice has been the refuge of monarchs in want of thrones she would n't know herself without her <i>rois en exil.</i> The exile is agreeable and soothing, the gondola lets them down gently. Its movement is an anodyne, its silence a philtre, and little by little it rocks all ambitions to sleep.
"ADIEU, GRANDS ERASEURS DE ROIS," so it starts: "Adieu, grand crushers of Kings; arrogant wind-bags, Turpin, Broglio, Soubise, Hildburghausen with the gray beard, foolish still as when your beard was black in the Turk-War time: brisk journey to you all!" That is the first stanza; unexceptionable, had we room.
"Would it be any use, if I did not allow it, you pushing man?" "Very well: "'Recois mes compliments, charmant roi de la Chine." "But he is an Emperor." "Yes, but that is a politeness towards you, sire, who are only a King!" "Only!" "I continue: "'Ton trone est done place sur la double colline On sait dans l'Occident, que malgre mes travers J'ai toujours fort aime les rois qui font des vers!"
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