I have seen a supper party under my
father's roof where our guests were two fencing-masters, three
professors of language, one ornamental gardener, and one translator of
books, who held his hand in the front of his coat to conceal a rent in
the lapel. But these eight men were of the highest nobility of France,
who might have had what they chose to ask if they would only consent to
forget the past, and to throw themselves heartily into the new order of
things. But the humble, and what is sadder the incapable, monarch of
Hartwell still held the allegiance of those old Montmorencies, Rohans,
and Choiseuls, who, having shared the greatness of his family, were
determined also to stand by it in its ruin. The dark chambers of that
exiled monarch were furnished with something better than the tapestry of
Gobelins or the china of Sevres. Across the gulf which separates my old
age from theirs I can still see those ill-clad, grave-mannered men, and
I raise my hat to the noblest group of nobles that our history can show.
To visit a coast-town, therefore, before I had seen my uncle, or learnt
whether my return had been sanctioned, would be simply to deliver myself
into the hands of the _gens d'armes_, who were ever on the look-out for
strangers from England.
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