* On the death of Dubois, the Regent wrote to the Count de Noce, whom he had banished for an indiscreet expression against the favourite, uttered at one of his private suppers: “With the beast dies the venom: I expect you to-night to supper at the Palais Royal.”
“Courage, my dear Count,” said he, kindly, “you have nothing to fear; return home and count upon an embassy!”
I relied on the royal word, returned to my lodgings, and spent the evening with Chaulieu and Fontenelle. The next day the Duc de St. Simon paid me a visit. After a little preliminary conversation, he unburdened the secret with which he was charged. I was desired to leave Paris in forty-eight hours.
“Believe me,” said St. Simon, “that this message was not intrusted to me by the Regent without great reluctance. He sends you many condescending and kind messages; says he shall always both esteem and like you, and hopes to see you again, some time or other, at the Palais Royal. Moreover, he desires the message to be private, and has intrusted it to me in especial, because hearing that I had a kindness for you, and knowing I had a hatred for Dubois, he thought I should be the least unwelcome messenger of such disagreeable tidings. ‘To tell you the truth, St. Simon,’ said the Regent, laughing, ‘I only consent to have him banished, from a firm conviction that if I do not Dubois will take some opportunity of having him beheaded.’”
“Pray,” said I, smiling with a tolerably good grace, “pray give my most grateful and humble thanks to his Highness, for his very considerate and kind foresight. I could not have chosen better for myself than his Highness has chosen for me: my only regret on quitting France is at leaving a prince so affable as Philip and a courtier so virtuous as St. Simon.”
Though the good Duc went every year to the Abbey de la Trappe for the purpose of mortifying his sins and preserving his religion in so impious an atmosphere as the Palais Royal, he was not above flattery; and he expressed himself towards me with particular kindness after my speech.
At court, one becomes a sort of human ant-bear, and learns to catch one’s prey by one’s tongue.
After we had eased ourselves a little by abusing Dubois, the Duc took his leave in order to allow me time to prepare for my “journey,” as he politely called it. Before he left, he, however, asked me whither my course would be bent? I told him that I should take my chance with the Czar Peter, and see if his czarship thought the same esteem was due to the disgraced courtier as to the favoured diplomatist.
That night I received a letter from St. Simon, enclosing one addressed with all due form to the Czar. “You will consider the enclosed,” wrote St. Simon, “a fresh proof of the Regent’s kindness to you; it is a most flattering testimonial in your favour, and cannot fail to make the Czar anxious to secure your services.”
I was not a little touched by a kindness so unusual in princes to their discarded courtiers, and this entirely reconciled me to a change of scene which, indeed, under any other circumstances, my somewhat morbid love for action and variety would have induced me rather to relish than dislike.