‘They are considering of a descent on the Isle of Wight to carry off my father from Carisbrooke,’ he said.
‘And will not your Highness be with them?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes, I shall be with them, of course, as soon as there is anything to be done; but as to the ways and means, they may arrange that as they choose. Are you to be at Madame de Choisy’s ball’
I was quite provoked with him for being able to think of such matters when his father’s rescue was at stake; but he bade me ask his mother and mine whether it were not an important question, and then told me that he must make me understand the little comedy in which he was an actor.
Prince as he was, I could not help saying that I cared more for the tragedy in which we all might be actors; and he shrugged his shoulders, and said that life would be insupportable if all were to be taken in the grand serious way. However, Prince Rupert appealed to him, and he was soon absorbed into the consultation.
My brother told us the next morning of the plan. It was that Prince Rupert, with the ships which he had in waiting at Harfleur, should take a trusty band of cavaliers from Paris, surprise Carisbrooke, and carry off His Sacred Majesty. Eustace was eager to go with them, and would listen to no representations from my mother of the danger his health would incur in such an expedition in the month of November. She wept and entreated in vain.
‘What was his life good for,’ he said, ‘but to be given for the King’s service?’
Then she appealed to me to persuade him, but he looked at me with his bright blue eyes and said:
‘Meg learned better in Lorraine;’ and I went up and kissed him with tears in my eyes, and said: ‘Ah! Madame, we have all had to learn how loyalty must come before life, and what is better than life.’
And then Annora cried out: ‘Well said, Margaret! I do believe that you are an honest Englishwoman still.’