"But, on the other hand," said madame, almost as much afraid of the regent's real indulgence as of his apparent severity, "no weakness either."
"My mother," said the regent, "if she must deceive some one, I would rather that it was her husband than God." And kissing his mother's hand respectfully, he led her to the door, quite scandalized at those easy manners, among which she died, without ever having accustomed herself to them. Then the Duc d'Orleans returned to his drawing, humming an air from his opera of Porthée.
In crossing the antechamber, madame saw a little man in great riding-boots coming toward her, his head sunk in the immense collar of a coat lined with fur. When he reached her he poked out of his surtout a little face with a pointed nose, and bearing a resemblance at once to a polecat and a fox.
"Oh!" said the palatine, "is it you, abbe?"
"Myself, your highness. I have just saved France—nothing but that." And bowing to madame, without waiting for her to dismiss him, as etiquette required, he turned on his heel, and entered the regent's study without being announced.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE ABBE DUBOIS.
All the world knows the commencement of the Abbe Dubois. We will not enlarge on the history of his youth, which may be found in the memoirs of the time, and particularly in those of the implacable Saint-Simon. Dubois has not been calumniated—it was impossible; but all the evil has been told of him, and not quite all the good.
There was in his antecedents, and in those of Alberoni, his rival, a great resemblance, but the genius was on the side of Dubois; and in the long struggle with Spain, which the nature of our subject does not allow us to do more than indicate, all the advantage was with the son of the apothecary over the son of the gardener. Dubois preceded Figaro, to whom he probably served as type; but, more fortunate than he, he passed from the office to the drawing-room, and from the drawing-room to the court. All these successive advantages were the rewards of various services, private or public.
His last negotiation was his chef-d'oeuvre; it was more than the ratification of the treaty of Utrecht; it was a treaty more advantageous still for France. The emperor not only renounced all right to the crown of Spain, as Philip V. had renounced all his to the crown of France, but he entered, with England and Holland, into a league, formed at once against Spain on the south, and against Sweden and Russia on the north. The division of the five or six great states of Europe was established by this treaty on so solid and just a basis that, after a hundred years of wars and revolutions, all these states, except the empire, remain in the same situation that they then were.