It was dark but Gilbert noticed that this was not the trooper; rather an elderly man, with a lofty air and dainty tread spite of age. Going nearer and passing under his nose with audacity he recognized him as the Duke of Richelieu.
“Plague take her! after the corporal a Marshal of France—Nicole is aiming high in the army!” he said.
CHAPTER XV.
THE ROAD TO PREMIERSHIP IS NOT STREWN WITH ROSES.
WHILE all these petty plots were going on at Trianon amid the trees and flowers, making things lively for the people of that trifling world, the vast plots of the capital, threatening tempests, were unfolding their black wings over the Temple of Themis, as they said in those high-flown days.
The Parliaments, degenerate remnant of old French opposition to royalty, had recovered the art of hating under the capricious reign of Louis XV., and since they felt danger impending when their shield, Choiseul, was removed, they prepared to conjure it away.
The appointment of the Duke of Aiguillon, ex-Governor of Brittany, to the command of the Light Cavalry, thanks to Lady Dubarry’s influence over the King, was, to quote Jean Dubarry, “a smack in the face” for the Third Estate, from Feudality.
How would they take it?
Lawyers and politicians were keen-sighted gentlemen and where most folks are perplexed, they see clearly.
They resolved: “The Parliamentary Court will deliberate on the conduct of the ex-Governor of Brittany and give its opinion.”
The King parried this thrust by intimating to the peers and princes that they must not go to the Parliament session to take part in the discussion, as far as Duke Aiguillon was concerned.