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The money-lender readily consented, thanked the prince for the compliment, and, in the usual grandiloquent vein of Castilian courtesy, told Carlos that all he had was at his disposal. "I am glad to learn that," answered the prince. "You may make the loan, then, one hundred thousand ducats." Poor Grimaldo was thunderstruck. He tremblingly protested that it was impossible,—he had not the money.
Grimaldo, a little after the end of ceremony, had gone to work with the King and Queen, as was customary. I was surprised, an hour after returning home, to receive a letter from this minister, asking me if I had anything to say to the King I did not wish the Queen to hear, referring to the audience I had asked of the King for the morrow, and begging me to tell him what it was for.
This charge was committed to Doctor Don Christòval Grimaldo de Herrera and Sargento-mayor Juan de Veristain, alcalde-in-ordinary, who fulfilled it with the utmost discretion, quietness, and moderation; and the archbishop was embarked in a barcoluengo, in which the forethought of the governor had provided all his kitchen equipment, with everything else that was necessary for his support and the needs of the voyage.
Grimaldo proposed to draw from these circumstances all the benefit he proposed to have drawn from the letters had they been written in a fitting spirit, and he said he would answer for it; I should have the 'grandesse' and the 'Toison d'Or' without making the slightest allusion to the cold recommendations of M. le Duc d'Orleans to the King of Spain, and of Dubois to him.
Early the next morning I received a visit from Grimaldo, Minister of Foreign Affairs, who, overjoyed at my arrival, had announced it to their Catholic Majesties before coming to me.
I had left Paris with full liberty to employ every aid, in order to obtain these things; I had, too, from M. le Duc d'Orleans, the promise that he would expressly ask the King of Spain for the former favour, employing the name of the King, and letters of the strongest kind from Cardinal Dubois to Grimaldo and Father Aubenton.
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