“Well, it is but natural, perhaps, that such a Court should inspire such a stage,” returned Fareham, “and that for the heroic drama of Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster, Massinger, and Ford, we should have a gross caricature of our own follies and our own vices. Nay, so essential is foulness to the modern stage that when the manager ventures a serious play, he takes care to introduce it with some filthy prologue, and to spice the finish with a filthier epilogue.”
“Zounds, Fareham!” cried Masaroon, “when one has yawned or slept through five acts of dull heroics, one needs to be stung into wakefulness by a high-spiced epilogue. For my taste your epilogue can’t be too pungent to give a flavour to my oysters and Rhenish. Gud, my lord, we must have something to talk about when we leave the play-house!”
“His lordship is spoilt; we are all spoilt for London after having lived in the most exquisite city in the world,” drawled Mrs. Danville, one of Lady Fareham’s particular friends, who had been educated at the Visitandines with the Princess Henrietta, now Duchess of Orleans. “Who can tolerate the coarse manners and sea-coal fires of London after the smokeless skies and exquisite courtesies of Parisian good company in the Rue St. Thomas du Louvre—a society so refined that a fault in grammar shocks as much as a slit nose at Charing Cross? I shudder when I recall the Saturdays in the Rue du Temple, and compare the conversations there, the play of wit and fancy, the elaborate arguments upon platonic love, the graceful raillery, with any assembly in London—except yours, Hyacinth. At Fareham House we breathe a finer air, although his lordship’s esprit moqueur will not allow us any superiority to the coarse English mob.”
“Indeed, Mrs. Danville, even your prejudice cannot deny London fine gentlemen and wits,” remonstrated Sir Ralph. “A court that can boast a Buckhurst, a Rochester, an Etherege, a Sedley——”
“There is not one of them can compare with Voiture or Godeau, with Bussy or St. Évremond, still less with Scarron or Molière,” said De Malfort. “I have heard more wit in one evening at Scarron’s than in a week at Whitehall. Wit in France has its basis in thought and erudition. Here it is the sparkle and froth of empty minds, a trick of speech, a knack of saying brutal things under a pretence of humour, varnishing real impertinence with mock wit. I have heard Rowley laugh at insolences which, addressed to Louis, would have ensured the speaker a year in the Bastille.”
“I would not exchange our easy-tempered King for your graceful despot,” said Fareham. “Pride is the mainspring that moves Louis’ self-absorbed soul. His mother instilled it into his mind almost before he could speak. He was bred in the belief that he has no more parallel or fellow than the sun which he has chosen for his emblem. And then, for moral worth, he is little better than his cousin, Louis has all Charles’s elegant vices, plus tyranny.”
“Louis is every inch a King. Your easy-tempered gentleman at Whitehall is only a tradition,” answered De Malfort. “He is but an extravagantly paid official, whose office is a sinecure, and who sells something of his prerogative every session for a new grant of money. I dare adventure, by the end of his reign, Charles will have done more than Cromwell to increase the liberty of the subject and to demonstrate the insignificance of kings.”
“I doubt the easy-tempered sinecurist who trusts the business of the State to the nation’s representatives will wear longer than your officious tyrant, who wants to hold all the strings in his own fingers.”
“He may do that safely, so long as he has men like Colbert for puppets——”
“Men!” cried Fareham. “A man of so rare an honesty must not be thought of in the plural. Colbert’s talent, probity, and honour constitute a phoenix that appears once in a century; and, given those rare qualities in the man, it needs a Richelieu to inspire the minister, and a Mazarin to teach him his craft, and to prepare him for double-dealing in others which his own direct mind could never have imagined. Trained first by one of the greatest, and next by one of the subtlest statesmen the world has ever seen, the provincial woollen-draper’s son has all the qualities needed to raise France to the pinnacle of fortune, if his master will but give him a free hand.”