Plainly she was happy and well employed,—but not so absorbed in her new life as to be forgetful of her older friends. She wanted to know all about Madame Michot. Jacques had been to see her twice in the cart. And how was Mr. Dicky? Roger satisfied her on all those points. When it came to his own affairs, he told her glibly enough a number of things; that he feared the King would have to disband the gentlemen-at-arms; that the King gave him much writing to do, and the Queen made him go to church oftener than was altogether agreeable; and, in short, spoke freely of all his affairs, except the most important one—how his heart lay. He never once mentioned the Princess Michelle’s name, and if he knew of the encounter in the highroad, he kept his own counsel about it.

Roger passed a pleasanter hour with Bess than he had yet spent with her in France, and then had an interview with Papa Mazet, who returned home. Bess scurried out of the way as he came in.

“Well, monsieur,” cried Papa Mazet before Roger could speak. “Our postulant is getting on finely. Such a voice! such volume!—it increases daily. And she is, what so few girls of her condition are, a natural actress. The women of the people are not trained to self-control, and they rarely learn it. Your fine ladies are the ones to learn acting quickly, for they are taught to play a part as soon as they can speak. They know how to smile when they are inwardly tormented with vexation; to remain calm in the midst of provocation and tumult; to see ridiculous things without smiling and heart-rending things without weeping. And hark you, Monsieur Egremont, this girl of ours is very prudent where men are concerned. She seems well versed in the art of keeping them at a distance.”

“That is true,” gravely replied Roger. “I know of an English gentleman who once dared an impertinence with her, and she gave him in return a whack with a broom-handle, of which he will bear the scar to his dying day.”

“’Tis a blessed thing for her that she is of that mind,” answered Papa Mazet, “for she will have to keep many at bay as soon as she appears in public.”

CHAPTER VIII
WHEREIN THE PRINCESS MICHELLE IS PUT IN THE WAY OF SECURING THE DESTINY OF WHICH SHE HAS LONG DREAMED

BEING a changed man since last he was free, Roger Egremont had to learn himself all over, as it were. He had been stupidly surprised, at his first coming to St. Germains, that men had time for anything but preparing to return to England. He came, in time, to the melancholy belief, like the rest of his compatriots, that they would do no more fighting for James II. The next blow they struck would be for James III.; and he was a child not yet five years old! Nor did this sad conviction bring them to moroseness and despair, but rather to dancing, drinking, and fiddling. For men circumstanced as they were must seek forgetfulness, or else die of chagrin and weariness. So there was perpetual merry-making going on,—a masque, or a ball with a couple of fiddlers to make music, followed by a scant supper, or a holiday in the woods, and the ever gay inn of Michot. There was a general invitation to Versailles, and often special ones to Marly, given by the French King to the exiles of St. Germains; and as these people were full of gratitude towards him for his generosity to their master, King James, they sometimes went. But it was a costly business in carriages and fees and the like, and money was a scarce commodity, from the palace of St. Germains down to the humblest abode of exiles there. So the crowds of them stayed tolerably close to the village, which they had invaded in such numbers as to make a populous town. Roger Egremont was in the thick of all that was going on; and if sometimes, as he lingered under the quiet stars, returning from an evening of revelling, or walked in the dusky autumn twilight through the leafless alleys of the forest of St. Germains, he thought dismally of the future, and saw that no headway was being made toward a restoration, he presently shook off his uneasy feelings, whistled a lively air, and tried to be as unthinking as the rest. At all events, it was much better than Newgate; that was Roger’s everlasting consolation.

After the first dazzling delight of his freedom, he had returned to books. Once more they became the chief pleasure of his life. But he turned to them with altered feelings. Two years ago, they had been all in all. Now he had human companionships and friendships. Some of them, like that of the Duke of Berwick, Roger esteemed as a liberal education. He did not see Dicky very often, who had returned to studying, and his cousin Hilary was no more at St. Germains. His cousins of the Sandhills he did not desire to see, after a certain encounter with two of them in the courtyard of the palace one autumn evening. There they were, Giles and Edward Egremont, reeling about the courtyard, arm in arm, roaring drunk, and bawling and hiccuping for the King. The Queen came to the window, saw these two poor tipsy gentlemen, and turned away sorrowfully. Roger, who was leaning out of a window in the Hall of Guards, ran down and collaring the two of them, carried them off to the inn, where, both of them tumbling into Roger’s bed, they were soon snoring. By night they had sobered up enough to appear in the common room, where cards were produced, and as Dicky had said of the Sandhills Egremonts long ago, they gambled the shirts off their backs. They lost all their money, and actually wished to pledge their swords and coats, but could find no takers. Roger was no ascetic, and was not above cards and dice and a bowl of good liquor himself, as far as a gentleman might go in those days—which was considerably beyond what the present day allows. But he was no such man at cards and drink as his cousins, and was glad enough to pack them off to Paris, with all the money he could lay his hands on, as an inducement for them to go. There was another cousin of his, Anthony Egremont, who was a gloomy, fanatical man, not given to free living, but almost as offensive as his brothers, in his own morose, disagreeable way, to Roger. It was a misery to Roger that he could not pension these people off, and so get rid of the sight of their follies and improprieties. He was a man of a free and open hand, and one of his greatest pleasures, during the little while he had enjoyed his estate, was to give generously. He had done so, not only to Hugo and to little Dicky, but to scores of other persons. And how easy and pleasant it was, when money was plentiful, and his giving in no way stinted himself, to play the prince! He had given Dicky a fine bay filly, as good a horse as there was in England, but he had half a dozen equally as good standing in his stables. Roger could not get over a certain lordly habit of mind which accorded ill with the pittance from the King on which he had to live. The King’s manner of giving it was calculated to teach Roger the vanity of earthly wishes. He would be sent for to the royal closet privately, once a month, when the King would gently put a little packet in his hand, with some words of fatherly good-will; and this poor, unsuccessful King had so much of dignity in his sorrows, so much of gentleness toward his enemies, that Roger would be overwhelmed with the majestic picture of a good man bearing misfortune nobly. Had James Stuart been half the king in England he was in France, he might have kept his throne, and not a tithe of the people who followed him into poverty and exile, and remained with him, would have followed his successors under the same circumstances.

Whenever Roger Egremont went abroad, it was with the hope of meeting Mademoiselle d’Orantia. His eyes, as keen as they were bright, kept a continual lookout for her. Sometimes he met her at the château; occasionally he went to Madame de Beaumanoir’s rare routs, and each one of these meetings was a distinct epoch to Roger Egremont.

Oftenest they met walking upon the terrace in the afternoon, with great crowds of people sunning themselves in the mild autumn light, and looking down upon the meadows, green even at the fall of the leaf. Michelle would on those occasions, generally be walking with Madame de Beaumanoir, who never failed to snatch Roger, and who paid him the highest compliment she could command, by saying,—