When these three – Monsieur, Madame, and the Chevalier – were packed off to St. Cloud on short notice a few weeks ago, I assumed it was because the King had grown sick of their squabbling. But now I perceive that the King thinks in metaphors, and that he had to put them all together, like animals in a baiting-ring, to bring their conflict to a head, before undertaking his military campaign. Just as the domestic squabbles of Jupiter and Juno were thought by the Romans to be manifested in thunderstorms, so the squalid triangle of St. Cloud will be manifested as war in the Palatinate. Louis' empire, which now is interrupted in the Argonne, will be extended across and down the Rhine, as far as Mannheim and Heidelberg, and when domestic tranquillity is finally restored to St. Cloud, France will be two hundred miles wider, and the barrière de fer will run across burnt territory where German-speaking Protestants used to dwell.