The most casual glance at them would have shown what it is but fair to confess they never sought to conceal—that they were the pampered favourites of their master. It was not alone the richness of their embroidered dress, the boundless extravagance that all around them displayed, but, more than even these, a certain air of haughty pretension, the carriage and bearing of a privileged class, proclaimed that they took their rank from the high charge that assigned them the guard of the person of the sovereign.
When the power and sway of the monarchy suffered no check—so long as the nation was content to be grateful for the virtues of royalty, and indulgent to its faults—while yet the prestige of past reigns of splendour prevailed, the ‘Garde du Corps’ were great favourites with the public: their handsome appearance, the grace of their horsemanship, their personal elegance, even their very waste and extravagance had its meed of praise from those who felt a reflected pride from the glittering display of the court. Already, however, signs of an approaching change evidenced themselves: a graver tone of reprehension was used in discussing the abandoned habits of the nobility; painfully drawn pictures of the poor were contrasted with the boundless waste of princely households; the flatteries that once followed every new caprice of royal extravagance, and which imparted to the festivities of the Trianon the gorgeous colours of a romance, were now exchanged for bare recitals, wherein splendour had a cold and chilling lustre. If the cloud were no bigger than a man’s hand, it was charged with deadliest lightning.
The lack of that deference which they had so long regarded as their due, made these haughty satraps but haughtier and more insolent in their manner toward the citizens. Every day saw the breach widen between them; and what formerly had been oppression on one side and yielding on the other, were now occasions of actual collision, wherein the proud soldier was not always the victor. If the newspapers were strong on one side, the language of society was less measured on the other. The whole tone of conversation caught its temper from the times; and ‘the bourgeois’ was ridiculed and laughed at unceasingly. The witty talker sought no other theme; the courtly epigrammatist selected no other subject; and even royalty itself was made to laugh at the stage exhibitions of those whose loyalty had once, at least, been the bulwark of the monarchy.
In the spacious apartment already mentioned, and at a small table before an open window, sat a party of three, over their wine. One was a tall, spare, dark-complexioned man, with something Spanish in his look, the Duc de Bourguignon, a captain in the Garde; the second was a handsome but over-conceited-looking youth, of about twenty-two or three, the Marquis de Maurepas. The third was Gerald, or as he was then and there called, Le Chevalier de Fitzgerald. Though the two latter were simple soldiers, all their equipment was as costly as that of the officer at their side. As little was there any difference in their manner of addressing him. Maurepas, indeed, seemed rather disposed to take the lead in conversation, and assumed a sort of authority in all he said, to which the Duke gave the kind of assent usually accorded to the ‘talkers by privilege.’ The young Marquis had all the easy flippancy of a practised narrator, and talked like one who rarely fell upon an unwilling audience.
‘It needs but this, Duke,’ said he, after a very energetic burst of eloquence; ‘it needs but this, and our corps will be like a regiment of the line.’
‘Parbleu!’ said the Duke, as he stroked his chin with the puzzled air of a man who saw a difficulty, but could not imagine any means of escape.
‘I should like to know what your father or mine would have said to such pretension,’ resumed the Marquis. ‘You remember what the great monarch said to Colonna, when he asked a place for his son?—“You must ask Honoré if he has a vacancy in the kitchen!” And right, too. Are we to be all mixed up together! Are the employments of the State to be filled by men whose fathers were lackeys! Is France going to reject the traditions that have guided her for centuries?’
‘To what is all this apropos, Gaston!’ asked Fitzgerald calmly.
‘Haven’t you heard that M. Lescour has made interest with the king to have his son appointed to the Garde?’
‘And who is M. Lescour?’