"A splendid animal," said Wellington, "I hope to ride him next Monday at Fontainebleau."
My heart quailed within me. The hours glided on, and when driving the Duke to the theatre that evening in his cabriolet, so distracted was I that I grazed the curbstone, and was within an inch of knocking over one of the gendarmes as we approached the theatre.
It was late when we arrived; the last scene of "Orestes" was going on, with Talma as the hero; then followed the inimitable Mademoiselle Mars in "La Jeunesse de Henri Cinq," from which the English version of "Charles the Second" has been adapted.
To account for the change of monarchs, and to explain the inconsistency of having the wicked Earl of Rochester, the companion of "Sweet Prince Hal," I may remark that when the drama was first about to be brought out in Paris, during the reign of Napoleon I., the licenser objected to Charles, he being a restored Monarch, so the author had no alternative left him but to rewrite the whole piece or change his hero. The latter course he adopted, trusting that a Parisian audience would not detect the anachronism. The perfect acting of Talma had no charm for me, and when the after-piece began I was too wretched to laugh at the bonhomie of the actor who represented Captain Copp, or to appreciate the archness of that child of nature, Mlle. Mars as Betty.
Upon leaving the theatre I became so thoroughly distracted that I scarcely knew what I was about; unluckily a young horse, who was a little skittish, had on that evening taken the place of the one that I had been in the habit of driving, and, as there was an unusual crowd in the streets, extra care was necessary.
"With great difficulty I threaded my way through carriages of all descriptions, and was approaching the Rue de Rivoli when I heard a clattering of horses' hoofs behind me and the cheers of some hundreds of people assembled near the entrance to the Palace of the Tuileries.
"It is the King returning from the Louvre, where His Majesty has been dining with the Duke d'Orléans," said my companion.
At that moment my thoughts were entirely engrossed with Elmore, and I was rehearsing to myself how I should break the untoward news of the accident to the Duke. So, instead of pulling the left rein to enable the royal cortége and the cavalry escort to pass me, I pulled the right one, and very nearly brought my chief to grief. Happily, however, at this moment the only damage done was to the leg of a mounted police officer, who soundly rated me in language unfit to be repeated.
Misfortunes they say never come singly; we had not proceeded many yards, when a gamin, who had evidently a taste for pyrotechnic exhibitions, let off a cracker, which so frightened the animal I was driving that he bolted across the street, came in contact with a lamp-post, and as near as possible upset the cabriolet. What made it appear worse was that the escort above referred to was returning at a brisk trot to their barracks, and, had we been overturned, the Duke might, for the first time in his military career, have been trampled upon by French cavalry.
"Lucky escape!" was the only remark Wellington made, and as the danger to which I had exposed him had completely roused me from my lethargy, I at once "screwed my courage to the sticking place" and told the whole of my day's adventures with the hounds.