Devereux, Book IV.

ce of his manner, his consummate taste in all things, the exceeding variety and sparkling vivacity of his conversation, enchanted them. In later life he has grown more reserved a

my remembrance, and Oswald having said they belonged to a lady formerly intimate with my father, I inquired of my mother if she could guess to what French lady such initials would apply. She, with an evident pang of jealousy, mentioned a Madame de Balzac; and to this lady I now resolved to address myself, with the faint hope of learning from her some intelligence respecting Oswald. It was no

he month of March-sat a tall, handsome woman, excessively painted, and dressed in a manner which to my taste, accustomed to English finery, seemed singularly plain. I had sent in the morning to request permission to wait on her, so that she was

er seat she held me

our brave father," said she, wit

f, "Madame de Balzac would add that I am not so good-looking. It is true: the likeness is transmitted to me within rather

father, though, who never paid a compliment in his life. Your clothes, by the by, are in exquisite taste: I had no idea that English peop

relaxing demand of forms when forms were to be observed to them by others. Added to this, they talked plainly upon all matters, without ever entering upon sentiment. This was the school she belonged to; but she possessed the traits of the individual as well as of the species. She w

ot conceive the transport which must inspire a person entering it for the first time? But I had something more endearing than a stranger's interest to att

on to you against that

was of service

gest any mode of obtaining intelligence respecting him. Madame de Balzac hated plain, blunt, blank questions, and she always travelled through a wilderness of parentheses before she answered them. But at last I did ascertain her answer, and found it utterly unsatisfactory. She had never seen nor heard anything of Oswald since he had left her charged with her commission to me. I then questioned her respecting the charac

as now especially trusted and esteemed by the successor of that Jesuit Le Tellier,-Le Tellier, that rigid and bigoted servant of Loyola, the sovereign of the king himself, the destroyer of the Port Royal, and the mock and terror of the bedevilled and persecuted Jansenists. Besides this, I learned what ha

hat in which I retail it, was over, Madame de Balzac observed,

in his present ag

the son of the bra

, I feel, be a greater passport to the royal presence than that of a deceased soldier; and

and so easy a compliment

e, and will obtain so slight a boon for you with ease. He has just left his bishopric; you know how he hated it. Nothing could be pleasanter than his signing himself, in a letter to

s of my father's first wife, the haughty and ancient house of La Tremouille, m

former as they have with the latter, the unlucky Duc de Villars only excepted,-a man whose ill fortune is enough to destroy all the laurels of France. /Ma foi/! I b

ill, seeing that no further news was to be glea

d an address which, if not animated nor gay, had not been acquired without some youthful cultivation of the graces, gave me a sort of /eclat/ as well as consid

e Spectator did just what I should have done in a similar case, when he left his lodgings "because he was asked every morning how he had slept." In the immediate vicinity of the court, the King's devotion, age, and misfortunes threw a damp over society; but there were still some sparkling circles, who put the King out of the mode, and declared that the defeats of his generals made capital subjects for epigrams. What

dame de Balzac, I received a note from her requestin

t and prepossessing countenance. She introduced him to me as the Bishop of Frejus; and he received me with an air very un

is presence one who has such hereditary claims on his notice. Madame de Maintenon, by the way, has charged me to present you to her whenever you will give me the opportunity. She knew your admirabl

ved the good Bishop took especial pains to preserve clear from French politics. He asked me, however, two or three questions about the state of parties in England,-about finance and the national debt, about Ormond and Oxfor

g that you like me not as the politician, but the private re

was far from exclaiming, with Pindar, "Thy business, O my city, I prefer willingly to my own." Ah, there is a nice distinction between politics and poli

side of the water," said he; "I do not, however, yet like to commit myself so fully. And, indeed, I am not unwilling to have a litt

charming old man. Let us go, and polish away the wrinkles of our hearts. What cosmetics are to the

k up these papers, and take a melancholy drive, in