After our mutual greetings, I said, “Have the dead so strong an attraction that at this hour they detain the courted and courtly Bolingbroke from the admiration and converse of the living?”
The statesman looked at me earnestly: “Have you heard the news of the day?” said he.
“How is it possible? I have but just arrived at Paris.”
“You do not know, then, that I have resigned my office under the Chevalier!”
“Resigned your office!”
“Resigned is a wrong word: I received a dismissal. Immediately on his return the Chevalier sent for me, embraced me, desired me to prepare to follow him to Lorraine; and three days afterwards came the Duke of Ormond to me, to ask me to deliver up the seals and papers. I put the latter very carefully in a little letter-case, and behold an end to the administration of Lord Bolingbroke! The Jacobites abuse me terribly; their king accuses me of neglect, incapacity, and treachery; and Fortune pulls down the fabric she has built for me, in order to pelt me with the stones!”*
* Letter to Sir W. Windham.—ED.
“My dear, dear friend, I am indeed grieved for you; but I am more incensed at the infatuation of the Chevalier. Surely, surely he must already have seen his error, and solicited your return?”
“Return!” cried Bolingbroke, and his eyes flashed fire,—“return!—Hear what I said to the Queen-Mother who came to attempt a reconciliation: ‘Madam,’ said I, in a tone as calm as I could command, ‘if ever this hand draws the sword, or employs the pen, in behalf of that prince, may it rot!’ Return! not if my head were the price of refusal! Yet, Devereux,”—and here Bolingbroke’s voice and manner changed,—“yet it is not at these tricks of fate that a wise man will repine. We do right to cultivate honours; they are sources of gratification to ourselves: they are more; they are incentives to the conduct which works benefits to others; but we do wrong to afflict ourselves at their loss. ‘Nec quaerere nec spernere honores oportet.‘* It is good to enjoy the blessings of fortune: it is better to submit without a pang to their loss. You remember, when you left me, I was preparing myself for this stroke: believe me, I am now prepared.”
* “It becomes us neither to court nor to despise honours.”