"At least," said I, "he is no hypocrite, and that is some praise."
"Hem!" ejaculated the Duke, very slowly, and then, after a pause, he said, "Count, I have a real kindness for you, and I will therefore give you a piece of advice: think as well of Dubois as you can, and address him as if he were all you endeavoured to fancy him."
After this hint, which in the mouth of any prince but Philip of Orleans would have been not a little remarkable for its want of dignity, my prospects did not seem much brighter; however, I was not discouraged.
"The Abbe," said I, respectfully, "is a choleric man: one /may/ displease him; but dare I hope that so long as I preserve inviolate my zeal and my attachment to the interests and the person of your Highness, no—"
The Regent interrupted me. "You mean nobody shall successfully misrepresent you to me? No, Count" (and here the Regent spoke with the earnestness and dignity, which, when he did assume, few wore with a nobler grace)—"no, Count, I make a distinction between those who minister to the state and those who minister to me. I consider your services too valuable to the former to put them at the mercy of the latter. And now that the conversation has turned upon business I wish to speak to you about this scheme of Gortz."
After a prolonged conference with the Regent upon matters of business, in which his deep penetration into human nature not a little surprised me, I went away thoroughly satisfied with my visit. I should not have been so had I added to my other accomplishments the gift of prophecy. Above five days after this interview, I thought it would be but prudent to pay the Abbe Dubois one of those visits of homage which it was already become policy to pay him. "If I go," thought I, "it will seem as if nothing had happened; if I stay away, it will seem as if I attached importance to a scene I should appear to have forgotten."
It so happened that the Abbe had a very unusual visitor that morning, in the person of the austere but admirable Duc de St. Simon. There was a singular and almost invariable distinction in the Regent's mind between one kind of regard and another. His regard for one order of persons always arose either out of his vices or his indolence; his regard for another, out of his good qualities and his strong sense. The Duc de St. Simon held the same place in the latter species of affection that Dubois did in the former. The Duc was just coming out of the Abbe's closet as I entered the anteroom. He paused to speak to me, while Dubois, who had followed the Duc out, stopped for one moment, and surveyed me with a look like a thundercloud. I did not appear to notice it, but St. Simon did.
"That look," said he, as Dubois, beckoning to a gentleman to accompany him to his closet, once more disappeared, "that look bodes you no good, Count."
Pride is an elevation which is a spring-board at one time and a stumbling-block at another. It was with me more often the stumbling-block than the spring-board. "Monseigneur le Duc," said I, haughtily enough, and rather in too loud a tone considering the chamber was pretty full, "in no court to which Morton Devereux proffers his services shall his fortune depend upon the looks of a low-born insolent or a profligate priest."
St. Simon smiled sardonically. "Monsieur le Comte," said he, rather civilly, "I honour your sentiments, and I wish you success in the world—and a lower voice."