“Monseigneur, I fear,” answered I, smiling, “could obtain but little additional knowledge in that art in our barbarous country. A few rude and imperfect inventions have, indeed, of late years, astonished the cultivators of the science; but the night of ignorance rests still upon its main principles and leading truths. Perhaps, what Monseigneur would find best worth studying in England would be—the women.”
“Ah, the women all over the world!” cried the Duke, laughing; “but I hear your belles Anglaises are sentimental, and love a l’Arcadienne.”
“It is true at present; but who shall say how far Monseigneur’s example might enlighten them in a train of thought so erroneous?”
“True. Nothing like example, eh, Dubois? What would Philip of Orleans have been but for thee?”
“‘L’exemple souvent n’est qu’un miroir trompeur;
Quelquefois l’un se brise ou l’autre s’est sauve,
Et par ou l’un perit, un autre est conserve,’”*
answered Dubois, out of “Cinna.”
* “Example is often but a deceitful mirror, where sometimes one destroys himself, while another comes off safe; and where one perishes, another is preserved.”
“Corneille is right,” rejoined the Regent. “After all, to do thee justice, mon petit Abbe, example has little to do with corrupting us. Nature pleads the cause of pleasure as Hyperides pleaded that of Phryne. She has no need of eloquence: she unveils the bosom of her client, and the client is acquitted.”
“Monseigneur shows at least that he has learned to profit by my humble instructions in the classics,” said Dubois.
The Duke did not answer. I turned my eyes to some drawings on the table; I expressed my admiration of them. “They are mine,” said the Regent. “Ah! I should have been much more accomplished as a private gentleman than I fear I ever shall be as a public man of toil and business. Business—bah! But Necessity is the only real sovereign in the world, the only despot for whom there is no law. What! are you going already, Count Devereux?”