She looked at him no longer, and gently withdrew her hand from his grasp. She understood that, indeed, he had answered her question.
CHAPTER XIII
THE WEIGHT OF ETIQUETTE
Perhaps certain characteristics which milor the Marquis of Eglinton had inherited from his English grandfather caused him to assume a more elaborate costume for his petit lever than the rigid court etiquette of the time had prescribed.
According to every mandate of usage and fashion, when, at exactly half-past ten o'clock, he had asked M. Achille so peremptorily for his shoes and then sat on the edge of his bed, with legs dangling over its sides, he should have been attired in a flowered dressing gown over a lace-ruffled chemise de nuit, and a high-peaked bonnet-de-coton with the regulation tassel should have taken the place of the still absent perruque.
Then all the distinguished gentlemen who stood nearest to him would have known what to do. They had all attended petits levers of kings, courtisanes, and Ministers, ever since their rank and dignities entitled them so to do. Mme. la Comtesse de Stainville, for instance, would have stepped aside at this precise juncture with a deep curtsey and mayhap a giggle or a smirk—since she was privileged to be frivolous—whereupon M. Achille would with the proper decorum due to so solemn a function have handed M. le Contrôleur's day shirt to the visitor of highest rank there present, who was privileged to pass it over milor's head.
That important formality accomplished, the great man's toilet could be completed by M. le valet-de-chambre himself. But who had ever heard of a Minister's petit-lever being brought to a close without the ceremony of his being helped on with his shirt by a prince of the blood, or at least a marshal of France?
However, le petit Anglais had apparently some funny notions of his own—heirlooms, no doubt, from that fog-ridden land beyond the seas, the home of his ancestors—and vainly had Monsieur Achille, that paragon among flunkeys, tried to persuade his Marquis not to set the hitherto inviolate etiquette of the Court of France quite so flagrantly at defiance.
All his efforts had been in vain.
Monsieur d'Argenson, who was present on this 13th of August, 1746, tells us that when milor did call for his shoes at least ten minutes too soon, and was thereupon tenderly reproached by Madame la Comtesse de Stainville for this ungallant haste, he was already more than half dressed.