“After this event, the silence certainly continued still, but not the embarrassment, for, during the rest of the entertainment, we were all convulsed with suppressed laughter, and although of course good breeding and the rules of etiquette prevented its explosion, the conviction that we mutually understood the joke made us feel its relish the more keenly. The dinner concluded while this ludicrous impression lasted, and we retired to the drawing-room, glad to be emancipated from the restraint which sitting thus face to face with royalty always occasions.
“After a moment’s consultation amongst ourselves, we decided that it would be advisable to proceed at once to business, as many of us wished to return to Paris as soon as possible, to forward the measures concerning the public entrance of his majesty into the capital. I was spokesman upon the occasion, and ventured to suggest the propriety of at once opening the discussion at which we were all come prepared to be amicable wranglers. To our great surprise, his only answer was, ‘Let us digest first; we will speak of business another time.’
“I leave you to imagine the effect produced by these words. The action which accompanied them was even more expressive of his earnestness in the pursuit which he recommended, for he sank calmly down among the cushions of the sofa, and in another moment, before our astonishment had subsided, was lost in the sweetest and most quiet slumber I ever witnessed. It was a source of the greatest amusement to us all, as we moved noiselessly about the room, and spoke to each other by signs or in low whispers in order to avoid interrupting the important slumbers of the sovereign, to behold from the windows of the palace the eager expectation of the crowd assembled in the court below, whose anxious countenances, lighted up by the glare of the illuminations which decorated the frontage of the building, gave token of the intense interest with which they were regarding the moving shadows of those within.
“No doubt they deemed that the proceedings there taking place were big with the fate of the empire—the destiny of thousands of their fellow-countrymen. Each time that any form of more than ordinary dimensions happened to pass before the windows, it was immediately taken for that of the king, and was greeted with loud shouting and applause, which, however, failed to reach the ear of him for whom it was intended, and who still slumbered on, all unconscious either of the disappointment of those within or the expectation of those without.
“This apparently insipid and eventless dinner was to me one of the most extraordinary and interesting I ever remember, and it has remained a souvenir, when others, more remarkable for the wit and spirit of the guests or the generosity of the entertainer, have long ago been forgotten. It placed me at once au courant as to the views and habits of our ‘restored sovereign.’ In no one of the anticipations formed from this interview was I deceived. Selfish, insensible, luxurious, ungrateful, did I ever find him. This dinner at Compiègne was the very picture of his whole reign, and he fully justified the words of my honest friend Dunoyer—‘Among the millions of human lives confided to his charge, there is but one of value in his eyes; and that one the most valueless of all to the whole world besides.’”
“This repast must have equalled in its interest the famous dinner of the Consulte, eh? you remember, prince?” said the Count de Montrond, who had been listening attentively.
“Indeed, I do remember, and more’s the pity,” returned the prince, with a gentle laugh, “and I often wish that I could forget the circumstances attendant on that dinner. People talk of the sublime and ridiculous; but the horrible and ridiculous which were mingled in that scene rendered it altogether one of the most powerful and extraordinary of any I have ever witnessed, either mimicked on the stage or played in real life. I must tell you that I had considered myself extremely fortunate in my transactions with the representatives of the different Italian States who had assembled at Lyons to negotiate for the protection of their liberties by France. There remained but one clause of our treaty to be disputed—the most knotty point of all, and the one which I felt would exercise my utmost powers of persuasion when it came to be discussed in council. In order to conciliate as much as possible the opposing belligerents, I had been obliged to have recourse to the bait which seldom fails, if well ordered and well executed, that of a dîner diplomatique, trusting to my worthy ally, Carême, who, in cookery, had talent enough in his own person to finish what our united talents in diplomacy had so well begun.
“The dinner, then, was decided on; the day had arrived; and I was alone in my study, composing myself for the great struggle which was about to take place, when M. de la Bernardière came hurrying in, pale and breathless. ‘Well, we have committed a pretty blunder,’ said he; ‘only see; with all the “very clever men” by whom we are surrounded, what great fools we must be.’ He placed upon my desk an open letter which he had just received. It was from the secretary of the Archbishop of M—— to M. de la Bernardière, who was then supposed to be acting as my secretary. A letter purporting to be written in the strictest confidence, from ‘one gentleman to another,’ from a secretary to a man of honour, holding the same important office, having the same ministerial functions to fulfil, &c.; containing a sort of mysterious warning; a kind of covert denunciation against the whole proceedings of the Consulte; a threat of failure in all our schemes; an assurance that all the ambitious views of France were perfectly understood; and the letter concluded by declaring that they would be unmasked if the Archbishop of M—— were not invited to the dinner! I must own that this announcement took us rather by surprise; we had reckoned upon the Archbishop of M—— as one of the firmest allies of France, and it was, indeed, by a most inconceivable bévue that he had been left out. It must have occurred, no doubt, through some awkward mismanagement on the part of the servants; but, whatever the cause, and it was then too late to enter into any examination, it became evident that the remedy must be applied at once, and that the company of the archbishop must be secured without delay.
“It was M. de la Bernardière, then, who was commissioned to be the bearer of our humble excuses for the neglect of which the servants had been guilty, and our humble request that his Grandeur would overlook the awkwardness of our domestics, and accord us the advantage of his presence at the dinner, which certainly would not be complete without his company. I must confess that I awaited the return of La Bernardière with the greatest anxiety, as I was quite as fully aware of the necessity of securing the good-will of the Archbishop as the officious secretary himself could possibly be. La Bernardière, however, returned triumphant, and the description which he gave us of his visit added to the amusement caused by our groundless fears. He had found the archbishop attired in flowered dressing-robe and broidered slippers, reclining on an ottoman of curious workmanship, which had been presented to him on that very morning by a deputation of the manufacturers of the good city of Lyons, and the scene altogether had reminded him of an episode of the middle ages. His Grandeur the Lord Archbishop was a singular-looking personage; the melancholy expression of his countenance contrasting with ludicrous effect with the fat, rubicund jollity of his form and features. He was a large, heavy man, with a look of absolute despair, and perpetual groans issued from his brawny chest, like the angry bellowings of Mount Vesuvius. At his feet were seated, on a low stool, two young boys, who were chanting from the same book, and whose rare false notes were now and then punished by a smart kick behind, from his grandeur’s peaked slipper.
“He sighed sorrowfully when La Bernardière was announced, and received him with many a lugubrious lamentation on the miserable weather, which, by-the-bye, was beautiful; then he groaned deeply at the badness of the music of the mass at the cathedral on the day before, which, being of the very best order, and under the superintendence of the maëstro di capello of the Emperor of Austria, had been by every one else considered excellent; then he moaned at having been induced to leave his own country to come to such a place as Lyons, where it was evident his presence was neither sought nor needed, and finally pronounced a most bitter archiepiscopal curse upon the miserable fare of the hotel where he was staying, regretting, with most sublime energy, that he should ever have been induced to travel without his own cook, and vowing before the Virgin that he never would do the like again.