Anxious only to be free from the company of my too importunate Lovelace, I lent a ready ear to a masque who approached me in the habit of a French religious person, and whom I knew, by his air of gallantry, to be Mons. le Beaume. With him was a gentleman most elegantly dressed in a coat of red cloth of silver, buttoned with diamonds, and very richly laced, with waistcoat and breeches of satin. There was large diamond buckles in his shoes, which had monstrous high red heels, and he wore a great forked periwig, all in the mode of fifty years back. I observed this person particularly, because a few minutes ago he had come and tapped Mr Menotti on the shoulder, desiring him, as I think, to present him to me. His address seemed to put my persecutor out of countenance in an extraordinary manner, but he refused very vehemently to grant the request, though the other continued to urge it even with menaces, as I judged by his gestures.
“Fairest Clarissa,” says Mr le Beaume, bowing with great ceremony, “here’s his Most Christian Majesty the late King Lewis of France, whom the report of your virtues has reached in the other world, and brought him back to earth to show his admiration of ’em.”
“Sure his Majesty’s admiration of virtue is well known, sir,” said I.
“Madam,” says the strange gentleman in French, which also Mr le Beaume and I had used, “in his day virtue had not dwelt upon earth in the person of the divine Clarissa. With the good fortune of her example to guide him——”
“If your Majesty desire the divine Clarissa to guide you in the dance,” says Mr le Beaume, “there’s no time to lose. You can exchange fine phrases out of the romances afterwards.”
My cavalier offered his hand immediately, which I accepted, anticipating an agreeable contest of wits in forcing him to discover himself, for, what with his masque and his periwig, I was quite unable to recognise him as any of the gentlemen of the place, while his voice (and he spoke French as I had not thought any of our gentlemen could speak it) was also strange to me. So well did he present his character that he even danced in the French style, which is at once more ceremonious and displays greater vivacity than ours, until my curiosity was piqued in the highest degree. But ’twas not until we were sitting in the inner varanda after the dance, and my partner was fanning me, as is the custom here, that I had any chance to converse with him. His discourse suited less well with his disguise than his dancing had done; for although he made me several genteel compliments in the true romantic style, he turned quickly to speak of the ordinary affairs of the place, and among them of the matter of Kissendasseat. But here I stopped him.
“Pray, sir,” I said, “don’t mention that person’s name to me. For weeks there was nothing talked of in Calcutta but Kissendass and his women, his goods and his sacks of treasure, until I was tired to death of him.”
“His refuging here is much talked of, then?” asked the disguised.
“Really, sir, you must know that as well as I.”
“Pardon me, madam; how should I know that the ladies condescended to weary themselves with the trifles that interest us poor men? Yet I deserve the rebuke, for en’t the lady in this case Miss Clarissa Harlowe?”