CHAPTER IV.
Suddenly a great noise was heard in the street, and interrupted the lectures of father and aunt on the dignity of position and the pride of birth. Miss Lucretia and Louise ran to the window, and saw a cavalcade of carriages, with outriders, and footmen on the rumble, and all the stately accompaniments of the old-fashioned family coach, which, after a slow progress along the causeway, stopped at the hotel door.
"My friends! my noble friends!" exclaimed the marquis; "and I in this miserable dress!"
"The noble men! the salts of the earth!" equally exclaimed Miss Smith; "and I in my morning gownd!"
Saying this, she hastily fled into her bed-room, which, according to the fashion of French houses, opened on the sitting-room, and left the father and Louise alone.
The father certainly was in no fitting costume for the dignity of his new character. He was dressed according to the fashion of the respectable London trader of his time—a very fitting figure for 'Change, but not appropriate to the Marquis de Bouillon de Chateau d'Or. Nor, in fact, was his disposition much more fitted for his exalted position than his clothes. To all intents and purposes, he was a true John Bull: proud of his efforts to attain wealth—proud of his success—proud of the freedom of his adopted land—and, in his secret heart, thinking an English merchant several hundred degrees superior in usefulness and worth to all the marquises that ever lived on the smiles of the Grand Monarque. The struggle, therefore, that went on within him was the most ludicrous possible. To his family and friends he presented that phase of his individuality that set his nobility in front; to the French nobles, on the other hand, he was inclined to show only so much of himself as presented the man of bills and invoices; and in both conditions, by a wonderful process of reasoning, in which we are all adepts, considered himself raised above the individuals he addressed.
"Did they see you at the window?" he said, in some trepidation, while the visitors were descending from their coaches.
"To be sure," replied Louise; "and impudent-looking men they were."
"Ah! that's a pity. Do, for heaven's sake, my dear, just slip in beside your aunt. They are a very gay polite people, the nobles of France—"
"Well; and what then?"
"And they might take ways of showing it, we are not used to in England. Do hide yourself, my dear—there, that's a good girl." And just as he had succeeded in pushing her into the bedroom, and begged her to lock herself in, the landlord of the hotel ushered four or five noblemen into the apartment, as visitors to the Marquis de Bouillon. The eldest of the strangers—about forty years old—bespangled with jewels, and ornamented with two or three stars and ribbons, looked with some surprise on the plainly drest and citizen-mannered man, who came forward to welcome them.
"We came to pay our compliments to my lord the Marquis de Bouillon de Chateau d'Or."
"And very glad he is to see you, gentlemen," said their host.
"You?—impossible! He speaks with an English accent."
"An impostor!" replied another of the nobles, to whom the last sentence had been addressed in a whisper."
"I am, indeed,—and truly glad to make your acquaintance, I assure you."
"Well," resumed the Frenchman, "let me present to you the Viscount de Lanoy—the Baron Beauvilliers—the Marquis de Croissy—for myself, I'm Duc de Vieuxchateau."
"Sit down, gentlemen—I beg," said De Bouillon, after bowing to the personages named. "A charming place this Tours, and I'm very glad to see you—fine weather, gentlemen."
"I trust you have come with the intention of residing among us. Your estates, I conclude, are restored along with your titles."
"No, gentlemen, they're not. But we may manage to buy some of them back again. How's land here?"
"Land?" inquired the duke, rather bewildered with the question.
"Yes—how is it, as to rent? How much an acre?"
"'Pon my word, I don't know. When I want money I tell the steward, and the people—the—serfs, I suppose, they are—who hold the plough and manage the land—give him some, and he brings it to me."
"Oh! but you don't know how many years' purchase it's worth?"
To this there was no answer—statistics, at that time, not being a favourite study in France.
"But, marquis," inquired another, "hasn't the King restored you your manorial rights—your droits de seigneur?"
"No, sir."
"Then what's the use of land without them?" was the very pertinent rejoinder.
"What are they, sir?" inquired the marquis.
"Why, if a tenant of yours has a pretty daughter," said one.
"Or a wife," said another.
"Or even a niece," said a third.
"Well, sir, what then? I don't take."
"Oh, you're a wag, marquis!" replied the duke. "Didn't I see, as we stopt before your window, a countenance radiant with beauty?"
"Eyes like stars," chimed in another.
"Cheeks like roses. Aha! Monsieur le Marquis—who was it?—come!"
"Why, that,—oh, that,—that's a young lady under my protection, gentlemen; and I must beg you to change the conversation."
"Indeed! you're a lucky fellow! The old fool mustn't be allowed to keep such beauty to himself."
"Certainly not," returned the vicomte, also in a whisper.
"Lucky!" said De Bouillon—"yes, gentlemen, I am lucky. If you knew all, you would think so, I'm sure."
"She loves you, then, old simpleton?"
"I think she does—I know she does—"
"May we not ask the honour of being presented?"
"Some other time, gentlemen—not now—she's not here—she's gone out for a walk."
"Impossible, my dear lord; we must have met her as we came up stairs."
"She has a headache—she's gone to lie down for a few minutes," said the marquis, getting more and more anxious to keep Louise from the intrusion of his visitors.
"I have an excellent cure for headaches of all kinds," exclaimed the baron, and proceeded towards the bed-room door. The Marquis de Bouillon, however, put himself between; but the duke and vicomte pulled him aside, and the baron began to rat-tat on the door.
"Come forth, madam!" he began, "we are dying for a sight of your angelic charms. De Bouillon begs you to honour us with your presence. Hark, she's coming!" he added, and drew back as he heard the bolt withdrawn on the other side.
"Stay where you are! don't come out!" shouted De Bouillon, still in the hands of his friends. "I charge you, don't move a step!" But his injunctions were vain; the door opened, and, sailing majestically into the room, drest out in hoop and furbelow, and waving her fan affectedly before her face, appeared Miss Lucretia Smith—
"Did you visit to see me, gentlemen? I'm always delighted to see any one as is civil enough to give us a forenoon call."
The French nobles, however, felt their ardour damped to an extraordinary degree, and replied by a series of the most respectful salaams.
"Profound veneration," "deepest reverence," and other expressions of the same kind, were muttered by each of the visiters; and in a short time they succeeded, in spite of Miss Lucretia's reiterated invitations, in bowing themselves out of the room. They were accompanied by the marquis to their carriages, while Miss Smith was gazing after them, astonished, more than pleased, at the wonderful politeness of their manner. Louise slipt out of the bed-room, and slapt her astonished aunt upon the shoulder—
"You've done it, aunt!—you've done it now! A word from you recalls these foreigners to their senses."
"It gives me a high opinion," replied Miss Smith, "of them French. They stand in perfect awe of dignity and virtue."