Stair reiterated his request that the incidents of the private interview should not be further spoken of. Caroline consented; and she must have felt some contempt for him as he also promised that he would keep them secret, giving knowledge thereof to no man.
‘Well?’ said Carteret, enquiringly, as he met with Lord Stair after this notable interview with Caroline.
‘Well!’ exclaimed Lord Stair, ‘I have staggered her!’ A pigmy might as well have boasted of having staggered Thalestris and Hippolyta.
A short time subsequently Lord Hervey was with the Queen, in her apartment, purveying to her, as he was wont to do, the floating news of the day. Among other things, he told her of an incident in a debate in parliament upon the army supplies. In the course of the discussion, Carteret had observed that, at the period when Cardinal Mazarin was ruining France by his oppressive measures, a great man sought an audience of the Queen (Anne of Austria, mother of the young King Louis XIV.), and after explaining to her the perils of the times, ended with the remark that she was maintaining a man at the helm who deserved to be rowing in the galleys.
Caroline immediately knew that Lord Stair had revealed what he had petitioned her to keep secret; and feeling that she was thereby exonerated from observing further silence, her Majesty took the opportunity to ‘out with it all,’ as she said in not less choice French: ‘J’ai pris la première occasion d’égosiller tout.’
Reverting to Carteret’s illustration she observed that the ‘great man’ noticed by him was Condé, a man who never had a word to say against Mazarin as long as the cardinal fed a rapacity which could never be satisfied. This was, in some degree, Stair’s position with regard to Walpole. ‘Condé, in his interview with the Queen of France,’ observed the well-read Queen of England, ‘had for his object to impose upon her and France, by endeavouring to persuade her that his private resentments were only a consequence of his zeal for the public service.’
Lord Hervey, very gallantly and courtier-like, expressed his wish that her Majesty could have been in the house to let the senate know her wisdom; or that she could have been concealed there, to have had the opportunity of saying, with Agrippine—
Derrière une voile, invisible, et présente,
Je fus de ce grand corps l’âme toute puissante.
The quotation, perhaps, could not have been altogether applicable, but as Lord Hervey quoted it, and ‘my lord’ was a man of wit, it is doubtless as well-placed as wit could make it. The Queen, at all events, took it as a compliment, laughed, and declared, that often when she was with these impatient fellows, ever ready with their unreasonable remonstrances, she was tempted herself to say, with Agrippine, that she was—