“Let me interrupt you. I am so only because it is the taste of the day; but I despise the parade of military glory we have got into the habit of. I prefer the period when a mot did as much and more than a discharge of mitraille, and men's esprit and talent succeeded better than a strong sword-arm or a seat on horseback. There were gentlemen in France once, my dear Burke. Ay, parbleu! and ladies too,—not marchionesses of the drum-head nor countesses of the bivouac, but women in whom birth heightened beauty, whose loveliness had the added charm of high descent beaming from their bright eyes and sitting throned on their lofty brows; before whom our mustached marshals had stood trembling and ashamed,—these men who lounge so much at ease in the salons of the Tuileries! Let me help you to this salmi; it is à la Louis Quinze, and worthy of the Regency itself. Well, then, a glass of Burgundy.”
“Your friend Monsieur Jacotot seems somewhat of an original,” said I, half desirous to change a topic which I always felt an unpleasant one.
“You are not wrong; he is so. Jacotot is a thorough Frenchman; at least, he has had the fortune to mix up in his destiny those extremes of elevated sentiment and absurdity which go very far to compose the life of my good countrymen. I must tell you a short anecdote—But shall we adjourn to the terrace? for, to prevent the interruption of servants, I have ordered our dessert there.”
This was a most agreeable proposal; and so, having seated ourselves in a little arbor of orange-shrubs, with a view of the river and the Palace gardens beneath us, Duchesne thus began:—
“I am going somewhat far back in history; but have no fears on that head, Burke,—my story is a very brief one. There was, once upon a time, in France, a monarch of some repute, called Louis the Fourteenth; a man, if fame be not unjust, who possessed the most kingly qualities of which we have any record in books. He was brave, munificent, high-minded, ardent, selfish, cruel, and ungrateful, beyond any other man in his own dominions; and, like people with such gifts, he had the good fortune to attach men to him just as firmly and devotedly as though he was not in his heart devoid of every principle of friendship and affection. I need not tell you what the ladies of his reign thought of him; my present business is with the ruder sex.
“Among the courtiers of the day was a certain Vicomte Arnoud de Gency, a young man who, at the age of eighteen, won his grade of colonel at the siege of Besançon by an act of coolness and courage worthy recording. He deliberately advanced into one of the breaches, and made a sketch of the interior works of the fortification while the enemy's shot was tearing up the ground around him. When the deed was reported to the king, he interrupted the relation, saying, 'Don't tell me who did this, for I have made De Gency a colonel for it;' so rapidly did Louis guess the author of so daring a feat.
“From that hour, the young colonel's fortune was made. He was appointed one of the gentlemen of the chamber to his Majesty, and distinguished by almost daily marks of royal intimacy. His qualities eminently fitted him for the tone of the society he lived in; he was a most witty converser, a good musician, and had, moreover, a very handsome person,—gifts not undervalued at Saint-Germain.
“Such were his social qualities; and so thoroughly did he understand the king's humor, that even La Vallière herself saw the necessity of retaining him at the Court, and, in fact, made a confidant of him on several occasions of difficulty. Still, with all these favors of fortune, when the object of envy to almost all the rest of the household, Arnoud de Gency was suffering in his heart one of the most trying afflictions that can befall a proud man so placed; he was in actual poverty,—in want so pressing that all the efforts he could make, all the contrivances he could practise, were barely sufficient to prevent his misery being public. The taste for splendor in dress and equipage which characterized the period had greatly injured his private fortune, while the habit of high play, which Louis encouraged and liked to see about him, completed his ruin. The salary of his appointments was merely enough to maintain his daily expenditure; and thus was he, with a breaking heart, obliged not only to mix in all the reckless gayety and frivolity of that voluptuous Court, but, still more, tax his talents and his energies for new themes of pleasure, fresh sources of amusement.
“Worn out at length by the long struggle between his secret sorrow and his pride, he resolved to appeal to the king, and in a few words tell his Majesty the straits to which he was reduced, and implore his protection. To this he was impelled not solely on his own account, but on that also of his only child, a boy of eight or nine years old, whose mother died in giving him birth.
“An occasion soon presented itself. The king had given orders for a hunting-party at St. Cloud; and at an early hour of the morning De Gency in his hunting-dress took up his position in one of the ante-chambers through which the king must pass: not alone, however; at his side there stood a lovely boy, also dressed in the costume of the chase. He wore a velvet doublet of green, slashed with gold, and ornamented by a broad belt, from which hung his couteau de chasse; even to the falcon feather in his cap, nothing was forgotten.