De L'Orme. / The Works of G. P. R. James, Esq., Vol. XVI.

by G. P. R. James

"If there were any kindness in doing a pleasure to oneself," replied the stranger, "I would willingly take the credit of it; but in the present instance, as the gratification is my own, I cannot pretend to any merit."

This answer was somewhat too vague to satisfy me; and I replied, that "I was fully sensible of the honour done me; and would have much pleasure in returning his visit, when I knew where I might have the opportunity."

My method of receiving him, as equal with equal, seemed, I thought, somewhat to surprise him; for, half closing his eyes, in a manner which seemed common to him, he glanced round my small apartment with a scrutinizing look, too brief to be impertinent, and yet too remarking to escape my notice. "I shall esteem myself honoured by your visit," replied he, at length; "I am but a poor abbé,--my name Jean de Gondi, and you will find me for the present at the house of my uncle, the Duke de Retz."

It was, indeed, the famous abbé, afterwards Cardinal de Retz, with whom I was then in conversation. Not yet three and twenty years of age, he had already acquired one of the most singular reputations that ever man possessed. Daring, intriguing, and ambitious, nothing daunted him in his enterprises, nothing repelled him in their course. Storms and tumults were his element; and when, before he was seventeen, he wrote his famous "Conjuration de Fiesque," he seemed to point out the scene in which he was himself destined to act, to which nature prompted him from the first, and circumstances called him in the end. In his manner, there was a strange mixture of calm suavity, thoughtless vivacity, policy, frankness, and pride, which, combined together, served perhaps better to cover his immediate motives, and hide his real character, than the appearance of any uniform habit of mind which he could have assumed.

All men contain within themselves strange contradictions; but he was the only one I ever knew, who, upon the most mature reflection, acted in continual contradiction to himself. He would often put in practice the most consummate strokes of policy to gain a trifle, or to satisfy an appetite; and he would commit the most egregious follies and affect the most extravagant passions, to hide the shrewdest political schemes and conceal the best calculated and most subtle enterprises. He was a man on whom one could never calculate with certainty. It seemed his pleasure to disappoint whatever expectations had been formed of him; and yet, to hear him reason, one would have judged that the slightest action of his life was regulated by strong conclusions from fixed unvarying principles.

I had heard his character from many others, as well as from the Marquis de St. Brie; but as this last gentleman had calculated, when he sketched it to me, that my life would be limited to three days at the utmost, he could have had no possible motive in deceiving me.

With this knowledge of his character, then, it required no great discernment to see that the visit of De Retz was not without an object; and resolving, if it were possible, to ascertain precisely what that object was, I bowed on his announcing himself, and said, "Of course, Monsieur de Retz, it is needless for me to give you my name. You were certainly aware of that before you did me the honour of this visit."

"No, indeed!" replied he; "I am perfectly ignorant both of your name and rank, though, by your appearance, and by all I have heard of you, I can have no doubt in regard to the latter. The truth is, I was informed by persons on whom I could depend, that a young gentleman of singularly prepossessing appearance and manners had taken this apartment, and was supposed to be under some temporary difficulty."

I turned very red, I believe; but he proceeded. "People will talk of their neighbours' affairs, you know; and 'tis useless to be angry with them--but hearing this, as I have said, I felt an irresistible impulse to visit you, and to render you any assistance in my power. Nor will I regret it, even if I have been misinformed, inasmuch as it has gained me the pleasure of your acquaintance."

With such a speech there was no possible means of being offended, though I felt not a little angry at my affairs having been made matters of commiseration throughout the town. I was rather inclined to believe also, that the trouble which M. de Retz had given himself did not originate entirely in benevolence. I did not doubt that charity might have some part therein, for he had acquired a reputation, which I believe he deserved, for generous feeling towards the sufferings of his fellow-creatures; but the motives of men are so mixed that it is in vain tracing their original source. Like a great stream, the course of human action arises very often in five or six different fountains, each of which has nearly the same right as the others to be considered the head: and besides this, in flowing on from its commencement to its end, it receives the accession of a thousand other different currents, so that at the last not one drop in a million is the pure water which welled from any individual source.