A PRINCE, AN AUDIENCE, AND A SECRET EMBASSY.
THE Regent remained silent for a moment: he then said in an altered and
grave voice, "/C'est bien, Monsieur/! I thank you for the distinction
you have made. It were not amiss" (he added, turning to his comrade)
"that /you/ would now and then deign, henceforward, to make the same
distinction. But this is neither time, nor place for parlance. On,
gentlemen!" We left the house, passed into the street, and moved on
rapidly, and in silence, till the constitutional gayety of the Duke
recovering its ordinary tone, he said with a laugh,--
"Well, now, it is a little hard that a man who has been toiling all day
for the public good should feel ashamed of indulging for an hour or two
at night in his private amusements; but so it is. 'Once grave, always
grave!' is the maxim of the world; eh, Chatran?"
The companion bowed. "'Tis a very good saying, please your Royal
Highness, and is intended to warn us from the sin of /ever/ being
grave!"
"Ha! ha! you have a great turn for morality, my good Chatran!" cried the
Duke, "and would draw a rule for conduct out of the wickedest /bon mot/
of Dubois. Monsieur, pardon me, but I have seen you before: you are the
Count--"
"Devereux, Monseigneur."
"True, true! I have heard much of you: you are intimate with Milord
Bolingbroke. Would that I had fifty friends like /him/."
"Monseigneur would have little trouble in his regency if his wish were
realized," said Chatran.
"/Tant mieux/, so long as I had little odium, as well as little
trouble,--a happiness which, thanks to you and Dubois, I am not likely
to enjoy,--but there is the carriage!"
And the Duke pointed to a dark, plain carriage, which we had suddenly
come upon.
"Count Devereux," said the merry Regent, "you will enter; my duty
requires that, at this seductive hour, I should see a young gentleman of
your dangerous age safely lodged at his hotel!"
We entered, Chatran gave the orders, and we drove off rapidly.
The Regent hummed a tune, and his two companions listened to it in
respectful silence.
"Well, well, Messieurs," said he, bursting out at last into open voice,
"I will ever believe, in future, that the gods /do/ look benignantly on
us worshippers of the Alma Venus! Do you know much of Tibullus,
Monsieur Devereux? And can you assist my memory with the continuation
of the line--
"'Quisquis amore tenetur, eat--'"
"'tutusque sacerque
Qualibet, insidias non timuisse decet,'"*
answered I.
* "Whosoever is possessed by Love may go safe and holy withersoever he
likes. It becomes not him to fear snares."
"/Bon/!" cried the Duke. "I love a gentleman, from my very soul, when
he can both fight well and read Latin! I hate a man who is merely a
winebibber and blade-drawer. By Saint Louis, though it is an excellent
thing to fill the stomach, especially with Tokay, yet there is no reason
in the world why we should not fill the head too. But here we are.
Adieu, Monsieur Devereux: we shall see you at the Palace."
I expressed my thanks briefly at the Regent's condescension, descended
from the carriage (which instantly drove off with renewed celerity), and
once more entered my hotel.
Two or three days after my adventure with the Regent, I thought it
expedient to favour that eccentric prince with a visit. During the
early part of his regency, it is well known how successfully he combated
with his natural indolence, and how devotedly his mornings were
surrendered to the toils of his new office; but when pleasure has grown
habit, it requires a stronger mind than that of Philippe le Debonnaire
to give it a permanent successor in business. Pleasure is, indeed, like
the genius of the fable, the most useful of slaves, while you subdue it;
the most intolerable of tyrants the moment your negligence suffers it to
subdue you.
The hours in which the Prince gave audience to the comrades of his
lighter rather than graver occupations were those immediately before and
after his /levee/. I thought that this would be the best season for me
to present myself. Accordingly, one morning after the /levee/, I
repaired to his palace.
The ante-chamber was already crowded. I sat myself quietly down in one
corner of the room, and looked upon the motley groups around. I smiled
inly as they reminded me of the scenes my own anteroom, in my younger
days of folly and fortune, was wont to exhibit; the same heterogeneous
assemblage (only upon a grander scale) of the ministers to the physical
appetites and the mental tastes. There was the fretting and impudent
mountebank, side by side with the gentle and patient scholar; the
harlot's envoy and the priest's messenger; the agent of the police and
the licensed breaker of its laws; there--but what boots a more prolix
description? What is the anteroom of a great man, who has many wants
and many tastes, but a panorama of the blended disparities of this
compounded world?
While I was moralizing, a gentleman suddenly thrust his head out of a
door, and appeared to reconnoitre us. Instantly the crowd swept up to
him. I thought I might as well follow the general example, and pushing
aside some of my fellow-loiterers, I presented myself and my name to the
gentleman, with the most ingratiating air I could command.
The gentleman, who was tolerably civil for a great man's great man,
promised that my visit should be immediately announced to the Prince;
and then, with the politest bow imaginable, slapped the door in my face.
After I had waited about seven or eight minutes longer, the gentleman
reappeared, singled me from the crowd, and desired me to follow him; I
passed through another room, and was presently in the Regent's presence.
I was rather startled when I saw, by the morning light, and in
deshabille, the person of that royal martyr to dissipation. His
countenance was red, but bloated, and a weakness in his eyes added
considerably to the jaded and haggard expression of his features. A
proportion of stomach rather inclined to corpulency seemed to betray the
taste for the pleasures of the table, which the most radically coarse,
and yet (strange to say) the most generally accomplished and really
good-natured of royal profligates, combined with his other
qualifications. He was yawning very elaborately over a great heap of
papers when I entered. He finished his yawn (as if it were too brief
and too precious a recreation to lose), and then said, "Good morning,
Monsieur Devereux; I am glad that you have found me out /at last/."
"I was afraid, Monseigneur, of appearing an intruder on your presence,
by offering my homage to you before."
"So like my good fortune," said the Regent, turning to a man seated at
another table at some distance, whose wily, astute countenance, piercing
eye, and licentious expression of lip and brow, indicated at once the
ability and vice which composed his character. "So like my good
fortune, is it not, Dubois? If ever I meet with a tolerably pleasant
fellow, who does not disgrace me by his birth or reputation, he is
always so terribly afraid of intruding! and whenever I pick up a
respectable personage without wit, or a wit without respectability, he
attaches himself to me like a burr, and can't live a day without
inquiring after my health."
Dubois smiled, bowed, but did not answer, and I saw that his look was
bent darkly and keenly upon me.
"Well," said the Prince, "what think you of our opera, Count Devereux?
It beats your English one--eh?"
"Ah, certainly, Monseigneur; ours is but a reflection of yours."
"So says your friend, Milord Bolingbroke, a person who knows about
operas almost as much as I do, which, vanity apart, is saying a great
deal. I should like very well to visit England; what should I learn
best there? In Spain (I shall always love Spain) I learned to cook."
"Monseigneur, I fear," answered I, smiling, "could obtain but little
additional knowledge in that art in our barbarous country. A few rude
and imperfect inventions have, indeed, of late years, astonished the
cultivators of the science; but the night of ignorance rests still upon
its main principles and leading truths. Perhaps, what Monseigneur would
find best worth studying in England would be--the women."
"Ah, the women all over the world!" cried the Duke, laughing; "but I
hear your /belles Anglaises/ are sentimental, and love /a
l'Arcadienne/."
"It is true at present; but who shall say how far Monseigneur's example
might enlighten them in a train of thought so erroneous?"
"True. Nothing like example, eh, Dubois? What would Philip of Orleans
have been but for thee?"
"'L'exemple souvent n'est qu'un miroir trompeur;
Quelquefois l'un se brise ou l'autre s'est sauve,
Et par ou l'un perit, un autre est conserve,'"*
answered Dubois, out of "Cinna."
* "Example is often but a deceitful mirror, where sometimes one destroys
himself, while another comes off safe; and where one perishes, another
is preserved."
"Corneille is right," rejoined the Regent. "After all, to do thee
justice, /mon petit Abbe/, example has little to do with corrupting us.
Nature pleads the cause of pleasure as Hyperides pleaded that of Phryne.
She has no need of eloquence: she unveils the bosom of her client, and
the client is acquitted."
"Monseigneur shows at least that he has learned to profit by my humble
instructions in the classics," said Dubois.
The Duke did not answer. I turned my eyes to some drawings on the
table; I expressed my admiration of them. "They are mine," said the
Regent. "Ah! I should have been much more accomplished as a private
gentleman than I fear I ever shall be as a public man of toil and
business. Business--bah! But Necessity is the only real sovereign in
the world, the only despot for whom there is no law. What! are you
going already, Count Devereux?"
"Monseigneur's anteroom is crowded with less fortunate persons than
myself, whose sins of envy and covetousness I am now answerable for."
"Ah--well! I must hear the poor devils; the only pleasure I have is in
seeing how easily I can make them happy. Would to Heaven, Dubois, that
one could govern a great kingdom only by fair words! Count Devereux,
you have seen me to-day as my acquaintance; see me again as my
petitioner. /Bon jour, Monsieur/."
And I retired, very well pleased with my reception; from that time,
indeed, during the rest of my short stay at Paris, the Prince honoured
me with his especial favour. But I have dwelt too long on my sojourn at
the French court. The persons whom I have described, and who alone made
that sojourn memorable, must be my apology.
One day I was honoured by a visit from the Abbe Dubois. After a short
conversation upon indifferent things, he accosted me thus:--
"You are aware, Count Devereux, of the partiality which the Regent has
conceived towards you. Fortunate would it be for the Prince" (here
Dubois elevated his brows with an ironical and arch expression), "so
good by disposition, so injured by example, if his partiality had been
more frequently testified towards gentlemen of your merit. A mission of
considerable importance, and one demanding great personal address, gives
his Royal Highness an opportunity of testifying his esteem for you. He
honoured me with a conference on the subject yesterday, and has now
commissioned me to explain to you the technical objects of this mission,
and to offer to you the honour of undertaking it. Should you accept the
proposals, you will wait upon his Highness before his /levee/
to-morrow."
Dubois then proceeded, in the clear, rapid manner peculiar to him, to
comment on the state of Europe. "For France," said he, in concluding
his sketch, "peace is absolutely necessary. A drained treasury, an
exhausted country, require it. You see, from what I have said, that
Spain and England are the principal quarters from which we are to dread
hostilities. Spain we must guard against; England we must propitiate:
the latter object is easy in England in any case, whether James or
George be uppermost. For whoever is king in England will have quite
enough to do at home to make him agree willingly enough to peace abroad.
The former requires a less simple and a more enlarged policy. I fear
the ambition of the Queen of Spain and the turbulent genius of her
minion Alberoni. We must fortify ourselves by new forms of alliance, at
various courts, which shall at once defend us and intimidate our
enemies. We wish to employ some nobleman of ability and address, on a
secret mission to Russia: will you be that person? Your absence from
Paris will be but short; you will see a very droll country, and a very
droll sovereign; you will return hither, doubly the rage, and with a
just claim to more important employment hereafter. What say you to the
proposal?"
"I must hear more," said I, "before I decide."
The Abbe renewed. It is needless to repeat all the particulars of the
commission that he enumerated. Suffice it that, after a brief
consideration, I accepted the honour proposed to me. The Abbe wished me
joy, relapsed into his ordinary strain of coarse levity for a few
minutes, and then, reminding me that I was to attend the Regent on the
morrow, departed. It was easy to see that in the mind of that subtle
and crafty ecclesiastic, with whose manoeuvres private intrigues were
always blended with public, this offer of employment veiled a desire to
banish me from the immediate vicinity of the good-natured Regent, whose
favour the aspiring Abbe wished at that exact moment exclusively to
monopolize. Mere men of pleasure he knew would not interfere with his
aims upon the Prince; mere men of business still less: but a man who was
thought to combine the capacities of both, and who was moreover
distinguished by the Regent, he deemed a more dangerous rival than the
inestimable person thus suspected really was.
However, I cared little for the honest man's motives. Adventure to me
had always greater charms than dissipation, and it was far more
agreeable to the nature of my ambition, to win distinction by any
honourable method, than by favouritism at a court so hollow, so
unprincipled, and so grossly licentious as that of the Regent. There to
be the most successful courtier was to be the most amusing profligate.
Alas, when the heart is away from its objects, and the taste revolts at
its excess, Pleasure is worse than palling: it is a torture! and the
devil in Jonson's play did not perhaps greatly belie the truth when he
averred "that the pains in his native country were pastimes to the life
of a person of fashion."
The Duke of Orleans received me the next morning with more than his
wonted /bonhomie/. What a pity that so good-natured a prince should
have been so bad a man! He enlarged more easily and carelessly than his
worthy preceptor had done upon the several points to be observed in my
mission; then condescendingly told me he was very sorry to lose me from
his court, and asked me, at all events, before I left Paris, to be a
guest at one of his select suppers. I appreciated this honour at its
just value. To these suppers none were asked but the Prince's chums, or
/roues/,* as he was pleased to call them. As, /entre nous/, these chums
were for the most part the most good-for-nothing people in the kingdom,
I could not but feel highly flattered at being deemed, by so deep a
judge of character as the Regent, worthy to join them. I need not say
that the invitation was eagerly accepted, nor that I left Philippe le
Debonnaire impressed with the idea of his being the most admirable
person in Europe. What a fool a great man is if he does not study to be
affable: weigh a prince's condescension in one scale, and all the
cardinal virtues in the other, and the condescension will outweigh them
all! The Regent of France ruined his country as much as he well could
do, and there was not a dry eye when he died!
* The term /roue/, now so comprehensive, was first given by the Regent
to a select number of his friends; according to them, because they would
be broken on the wheel for his sake, according to himself, because they
deserved to be so broken.--ED.
A day had now effected a change--a great change--in my fate. A new
court, a new theatre of action, a new walk of ambition, were suddenly
opened to me. Nothing could be more promising than my first employment;
nothing could be more pleasing than the anticipation of the change. "I
must force myself to be agreeable to-night," said I, as I dressed for
the Regent's supper. "I must leave behind me the remembrance of a /bon
mot/, or I shall be forgotten."
And I was right. In that whirlpool, the capital of France, everything
sinks but wit: /that/ is always on the surface; and we must cling to it
with a firm grasp, if we would not go down to--"the deep oblivion."