We all laughed at this enthusiastic burst of virtue from the chaste Chaulieu. And Arouet turned our conversation towards the ecclesiastical dissensions between Jesuits and Jansenists that then agitated the kingdom. “Those priests,” said Bolingbroke, “remind me of the nurses of Jupiter: they make a great clamour in order to drown the voice of their God.”
“Bravissimo!” cried Hamilton. “Is it not a pity, Messieurs, that my Lord Bolingbroke was not a Frenchman? He is almost clever enough to be one.”
“If he would drink a little more, he would be,” cried Chaulieu, who was now setting us all a glorious example.
“What say you, Morton?” exclaimed Bolingbroke; “must we not drink these gentlemen under the table for the honour of our country?”
“A challenge! a challenge!” cried Chaulieu. “I march first to the field!”
“Conquest or death!” shouted Bolingbroke. And the rites of Minerva were forsaken for those of Bacchus.
CHAPTER VI.
A COURT, COURTIERS, AND A KING.
I THINK it was the second day after this “feast of reason” that Lord Bolingbroke deemed it advisable to retire to Lyons till his plans of conduct were ripened into decision. We took an affectionate leave of each other; but before we parted, and after he had discussed his own projects of ambition, we talked a little upon mine. Although I was a Catholic and a pupil of Montreuil, although I had fled from England and had nothing to expect from the House of Hanover, I was by no means favourably disposed towards the Chevalier and his cause. I wonder if this avowal will seem odd to Englishmen of the next century! To Englishmen of the present one, a Roman Catholic and a lover of priestcraft and tyranny are two words for the same thing; as if we could not murmur at tithes and taxes, insecurity of property or arbitrary legislation, just as sourly as any other Christian community. No! I never loved the cause of the Stuarts,—unfortunate, and therefore interesting, as the Stuarts were; by a very stupid and yet uneffaceable confusion of ideas, I confounded it with the cause of Montreuil, and I hated the latter enough to dislike the former: I fancy all party principles are formed much in the same manner. I frankly told Bolingbroke my disinclination to the Chevalier.