Reporting himself after his visit to Bar, as in duty bound, to King Louis, Leopold declares himself "charmé de l'esprit, de la sagesse, de la douceur et des manières gracieuses de M. le Chevalier de Saint Georges." The 'Journal de Verdun,' drawing its information, of course, from official sources, announces that after their first encounter the two princes "se separèrent extrêmement satisfaits l'un de l'autre" in "parfaite amitié bien cimentée." Of James it will have it that he is "d'un caractère si doux, si affable, et si populair, qu'il s'est bientôt acquis, de tous ceux qui ont eu l'honneur de le voir, le respect et la vénération dûs à sa vertu et à sa naissance."
Leopold gone, the time passed, on the whole, quietly at Bar. There were occasional alarms, when some suspicious stranger had been seized. On one occasion, again, there is some talk of a "poisoned letter," sent in an ingenious fashion. To Louis, we find, the Duke appeared a little too forward in warning James of these dangers, as if he wanted to frighten his guest into quitting Lorraine. To vary the little episodes, there was the famous coëqure, who so much amused Queen Mary Beatrice's companions with his odd manners and his "thou"-ing. "The Spirit had moved him," as we know, to inform James that he was to rule over England, in which country there were plenty of well-wishers to support him. Were money wanted, he said that his friends would readily combine to raise some millions. They did not, welcome as the money would have been to James, whom we find continually complaining of want of funds. In the cipher despatches the common burden is, that "Mr. Parton" will not "deliver the goods." There is another prophetic person to encourage the Pretender, a nun of the "Monastère de Sainte Marie del Roma," near Montevallo—accredited by her superior, who writes to the Marquis Spada that her prophecies have never failed to come true. If he escapes the many traps set for him in 1715, so the nun says, James will certainly become King of England. Occasionally also there are little tiffs between English visitors and Barisien residents. What English, Scotch, and Irish there were there, we do not know for certain, but there were a goodly number, and not all of the best manners. Noel, who is a good historian on Lorrain things, but a little at fault on English, will have it that among these people was "Lord Chatham, qui devint plus tard si célèbre." Occasionally there was a visitor coming on the sly with news—such as the Duke of Berwick, whose visits were at one time frequent—or, towards the end of the sojourn, the banished Lord Bolingbroke, and "Le Comte de Peterborough" travelling under the pseudonym of "Schmit." Marlborough did not come himself, but he sent an aide-de-camp on a confidential mission to Lunéville, overflowing with pleasant words, and through him be begged particularly to be well and promptly advised on the Chevalier's movements, since "Le salut d'Angleterre" might depend upon this. The Duke of Lorraine was not particularly impressed with James's followers, especially after Lord Middleton was gone. "Ce ne sont que des gens d'un caractère fort médiocre," he writes. They talk about things which affect their chief with the utmost freedom. In Mr Higgons, who had succeeded Lord Middleton, he could discern no merit whatever. As for Lord Middleton, he found him "fort reservé et voulant dominer seul." He gives him credit for capacity and zeal, but censures him as being "timide et irresolu." All the rest, he says, are "de jeunes gens qui ne pouuoint souffrir ce Milord, et qui auoint eu l'imprudence de dire à Lunéville qu'il etoit si fort hay en Angleterre que les plus zelez partisans de leur Maitre auoint temoigné qu'ils ne feroint jamais rien pour ces interests tant qu'il l'auroit au-prez de luy." All these men evidently have very little knowledge of what is going on at home, he says. There is no one in whose judgment the Pretender might repose any faith except it be the Earl of Oxford or Lord Bolingbroke.
On the whole, the Pretender's life at Bar, though perhaps a little monotonous, can scarcely have been unpleasant. He made friends with the local haute volée, asking them to dinner, and being asked back—and borrowed money from them whenever he could. His especial friends were the Marquis de Bassompierre, from whom he borrowed 15,000 livres, which the Duke repaid in 1719, and M. de Rousselle. A good deal of time the Chevalier spent in his closet, with Nairne, or Higgons, or Middleton, concocting plans and dictating long memorials to the Pope, or else to Cardinal Gualterio, advocating the canonisation of Bellarmine, recommending protégés for places which they never got, and insisting on his right to nominate bishops to Irish sees, the names of which he could not spell. At off-times he played reversi, boston, and ombre, and occasionally petit palet, which is an aristocratic form of chuck-farthing. Then there was the pleasure of the chase, of which we know from Father Leslie that James was a tolerably keen votary. In Lorraine the diversion of vénerie was held in high estimation, though reserved only for very great magnates, and guarded by a ring-fence of the strictest enactments against vulgar intrusion. Poaching accordingly came to be a very common offence. "Ground game," indeed—at any rate rabbits—it was open to all to shoot. "High game"—i.e., deer—on the other hand, was reserved within certain limits exclusively for the Duke. Within about eight miles of the Duke's palaces, in what were called the ducal plaisirs, not even nobles of the highest rank were permitted to shoot or hunt. No dogs belonging to private persons were allowed in the fields near those plaisirs, on any pretence whatever, be the deer, and boars, and wolves, ever so troublesome. Even shepherds' dogs and watch-dogs must have their hamstrings cut, or else a log tied round their necks. And in some districts every Parish was required by law to provide a louvière or wolf's pit, 20 feet deep, 18 feet wide at its bottom, and 12 at its opening. From "le haut puissant messire" Jean de Ligniville's most amusing disquisitions on "La Meutte et Venerie" we learn that the district about Bar was "très boisé" and well stocked with game of every description, which, local chroniclers tell us, James was frequently occupied in hunting. Lorrain and English hunting were not then as far apart in their general features as one might be tempted to assume. English kings had more than once sent presents of English hounds to Lorrain dukes—Charles III. received from James I. a present of eighty harriers at a time. And more than one Lorrain grandee came over to hunt and shoot here. Ligniville himself, the Duke's Grand Veneur (under Charles IV.), had frequently hunted in England, and expressed himself especially delighted with the sport in which he had joined in Yorkshire. On the whole, he appears to have considered English hounds superior to French—less eager at first, but with more stay in them—and he was proud of having received presents of some from the Prince of Wales of his time (Charles I.), "Milord de Hée," and from "Milord Howard." But a cross between English and French hounds he seems to have regarded as the ne plus ultra of excellence. "Puss" was very much persecuted in the valley of the Meuse, furnishing by its exceptional swiftness and skill in swimming almost too good sport, "contre montant l'eaüe tellement viste que les chiens ne les pouuoint pas aborder." James's hunting sometimes led him into adventures, and on one occasion nearly saddled his host with a diplomatic difficulty. Riding hard, he once got to the little town of Ligny at nightfall, some eight miles from Bar, in a vassal territory belonging, under the Duke of Lorraine, to Montmorency, Duke of Luxemburg. The Duke of Luxemburg, being rather a big vassal, was in consequence also a very troublesome one, and the Lorrain Court and his officers frequently found themselves at loggerheads. To James, coming from Bar, with fifty Lorrain gens d'armes, besides his own suite, the maire resolutely refused to open the gates and furnish lodgings for the night, grounding his refusal upon a decision of the Parliament of Paris passed in the year 1661. The Lorrains were quite prepared for a siege and an assault. However, James deemed it wiser to leave things alone, and so the company rode half a mile further, to a little village called Velaine, where they spent a most uncomfortable night. Soon we have Montmorency complaining to King Louis of the assumed "nouuelles entreprises de M. le Duc de Lorrain sur mon comté de Ligny." Leopold revenged himself by imprisoning about a dozen maires of the Ligny county, on the plea of their having failed to furnish the requisite waggons, and in the end bought Montmorency out with the sum of 2,600,000 francs.
All this, however, was not enough excitement for James. In one of his letters he plaintively calls Bar his "Todis"—by which of course he means "Tomis." "Tomis," by a natural train of thought suggested—besides the tristia, of which we have plenty—the ars amatoria. And to it the Chevalier devoted not a few of his unoccupied hours. If local tradition speaks true, he differed very materially in his prosecution of this art from his father, of whom Catherine Sedley said that on what principle he selected the ladies of his heart she could never make out. None of them were good-looking, and if any of them had wit, he had not the wit to find it out. And Mary of Modena, his wife, added that, although he was willing to give up his crown for his faith, he could never muster sufficient resolution to discard a mistress. His son was in both respects far more of a man of the world.
It was in the green bosquets of those Pâquis, his favourite lounging-place, that James first discovered his human jewel. To house her suitably, he took—at somebody else's cost—a cottage on the brow of the hill, where the view is delightful and the air magnificent. You can still approximately trace the site, high up in the Rue de l'Horloge, above the Rue St. Jean, a little below the neglected terrace in the Rue Chavée—which is well worth visiting for its prospect. As the house stood with its back to the hill and facing only the open space, there must have been absolute privacy. But, after moving down to the Lower Town, James found the ascent by those Quatre-vingt Degrés—which Oudinot rode up on horseback—a trifle laborious. The steps lead almost straight up from his house to the cottage, describing just enough of an angle to take in the humble building, now marked by a tablet, in which Marshal Oudinot was born. A more convenient arrangement could scarcely have been desired. But the steps were sadly "sales et délabrés." Not to inconvenience James in his amours, the town council readily voted the requisite sum for putting them into proper repair.
When September came on, James found the air on the castle-hill "trop vif." Although his mother generally reports that "il se porte bien," it is to be feared that his constitution was none of the strongest. We read in one of D'Audriffet's despatches, "que sa santé estoit toujours fort delicate." He has had a "fluxion" in the eye. He has "weak lungs." "He is evidently very poorly," writes D'Audriffet to Louis. He finds himself "alteré par l'intemperie du tems." He takes the waters of Plombières four times "for his health," and wants to take those of Aix-la-Chapelle. He talks of going to a warmer climate—Spain or Italy, or, more specifically, Venice. But he can now obtain no fresh passport from the Emperor. Then he goes to have a look at Saint Mihiel, likewise in the Barrois, only a few miles from Koeurs, in which another Prince of Wales, young Edward—the same whom Edward IV. meanly struck with his gauntlet, and Richard of Gloucester despatched with a stab, to stop his "sprawling"—spent his young years of exile in company with his mother, Queen Margaret, from 1464 to 1471. But he does not like the idea of living in the Benedictine Abbey. So the Duke orders the town council to get ready once more M. Marchal's convenient house below, to which the Chevalier insists that a second house adjoining shall be added, belonging to M. de Romécourt, besides a portion of one belonging to M. Lepaige, with a kitchen specially built, and a "gardemanger," a new door, and sundry other conveniences, to say nothing of the hiring of further accommodation for his horses, his kennel, his gens de vénerie, his guards, some of his suite—all of whom and all of which he wants very near him, and all of which consequently, costs the town a good deal of money. M. de Romécourt's house is a complete match to M. Marchal's, but smaller, bringing up the frontage to thirteen windows.
However, James was not always at Bar, nor yet always, when away, at Plombières. Duke Leopold was constantly inviting him to Lunéville, and sometimes to Nancy, and arranging most magnificent fêtes in his honour. Leopold could do things handsomely when he chose. Even when James stayed three whole weeks, there was something new provided every day to amuse him—"les plaisirs de la Cour étoint entremêlé de repas, de collations, de bals, de concerts, de Comédie, de promenades, de chasse, de feux d'artifice, etc., mais chaque jour tout étoit nouveau." Leopold's palace at Lunéville—the same in allusion to which Louis XV. said to King Stanislas, "Mon père, vous êtes mieux logé que moi"—was specially laid out for the gaiety and the varied succession of amusements for which the Lorrain Court was famous. It was at the Lorrain Court that the cotillon, that universal favourite on the Continent, was first invented. And in Leopold's theatre it was that Adrienne Lecouvreur made her first appearance.
To give James a right royal reception, Leopold spared neither pains nor money. He always made a point of going to meet his guest—to Batelemont, to Houdemont, or to Gondrecourt. To enable the Court to enter with proper spirit into all the magnificence prepared, we read in the official despatches, that in April, 1713, on the occasion of James's first visit, the Duke directed that two quarters' salaries, in arrear since 1711, should be paid to the officers of his household. D'Audriffet makes merry over this. But in France things were no better. The Court of Versailles, we know, was always behindhand in its payments to Queen Mary. Mrs Strickland makes this a matter of reproach to Desmarets, as if purely the result of his negligence. But the Court had not got the money. In 1715 we have D'Audriffet himself sending in his little account, which shows five years' salary to be owing, in addition to 24,800 livres of disbursements, the whole debt amounting to 84,800 livres.
Even more brilliant than the fêtes given at Lunéville, were those to which James was invited at the Château of Commercy, the seat of the Prince de Vaudémont. Vaudémont was rich and generous. He had occupied high positions in the army and the administrative services both of Austria and of Spain. He was a man pre-eminently prudent in council. Our William III. had discovered that, and had frequently sought his opinion, more particularly while the Treaty of Ryswick was under consideration. To James the Prince became a most valuable friend and confidant—more especially at that critical juncture when the Pretender's great aim was to get away unobserved form Lorraine. In his splendid castle of Commercy, set off by magnificent cent gardens and sheets of water throwing Versailles into the shade, the "Damoiseau" of Commercy gave fêtes the description of which baffled Court chroniclers of the period, and after which, in the words of the "Gazette de Hollande," James found himself constrained to go back to Bar in self-defence, "pour s'y delasser, pour ainsi dire, de la fatigue des plaisirs continuels." There was such a fête in June, 1713, arranged on a peculiarly lordly scale, in which a chorus of Pèlerins de Saint Jacques were brought in—appropriately hailing from "L'Isle de Cythère," and provided with passports from the goddess Venus—whose special object seems to be to say pretty things to James:—
"Vous gagnez tous les cœurs, tout le monde gémit
De voir un Roy d'une bonté si rare,
Et brillant de l'éclat de toutes les vertus
Loin des Etats qui lui sont dûs
Mais nous verrons un jour cette triple couronne
Qu'ont porté si longtems vos Illustres Ayeux,
Sur votre chef tomber des Cieux.
Le mérite, le sang, les Loix, tout vous la donne;
Laissez le soin de soûtenir ces droits
Au Dieu qui dans ses mains porte les cœurs des Rois."