Is it any wonder how the poor man adulates wealth, when those in high station—the great and titled of the earth—are so ready to worship and revere it!
My first care was, of course, to present myself before the Prince, my gracious master, and I drove at once to the Tuileries. There was a reception that morning by the King, and the Duc de St. Cloud led me forward and presented me to his Majesty, with a very eulogistic account of my services in Africa.
The King listened most graciously to the narrative, and then, with a cordial courtesy that at once put me at my ease, asked me several questions about my campaigns, all ingeniously contrived to be complimentary to me.
“Yours is not originally a Spanish family, Count; I fancy the name is Celtic.”
“Yes, Sire, we came from Ireland,” said I, blushing in spite of myself.
“Ah, very true. There was always a great interchange of races between the two nations. And have you never tried to trace back among your Irish ancestors, so as to learn who are the lineal descendants of your house?”
“I have been hitherto, Sire, rather a man of action than of thought or reflection. To obtain possession of a property belonging to my family, I undertook a journey to, and a long residence in, Mexico; and although successful in this, a subsequent misfortune deprived me of all I owned, and left me actually in want. The good fortune which led me to take service under your Majesty has, however, never deserted me, and I am enabled once again to assume the station that belonged to me.”
The King heard me with apparent pleasure, and after a few generalities about Paris and my acquaintances, said: “His Royal Highness the Duc de St. Cloud has asked me to appoint you on my personal staff. There is not at the present a vacancy, but you shall be named as an extra aide-de-camp in the meanwhile.”
Overwhelmed by this distinction, I could only bow my gratitude in silence; and, with an air and show of great devotion, I retired from the royal presence. Thus did proper feeling suggest the truest politeness; for had I been more assured, the chances were I should have endeavored to say something, and consequently committed a very grievous breach of etiquette.
The following day I received an invitation to dine at Court. The company was numerous, and among them I discovered the young English attaché who had so insolently treated my demands on my first visit to Paris. With what sovereign contempt did I now look down upon him! He was there, exactly as I left him, muddling away in the petty details of his little routine life,—signing a passport or copying a despatch, playing off the airs of grand seigneur to couriers and laquais de place, while in the same time I had won honors and rewards upon the field of battle, and now stood while the Prince leaned upon my arm and chatted familiarly over the assembled company. Nothing gave me a more confident sense of my own standing in the world than the feeling with which I now regarded those whom once I looked up to with a kind of awe. It is precisely as we discover that the hills which in childhood we believed to be gigantic mountains are mere hillocks, that in after life we find out how indescribably small are many of those we used to think of as “high and mighty.”