CHAPTER XXXI. Madame la Duchesse

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_ In one of Clive Newcome's letters from Baden, the young man described to me, with considerable humour and numerous illustrations as his wont was, a great lady to whom he was presented at that watering-place by his friend Lord Kew. Lord Kew had travelled in the East with Monsieur le Duc and Madame la Duchesse d'Ivry--the prince being an old friend of his lordship's family. He is the "Q" of Madame d'Ivry's book of travels, Footprints of the Gazelles, by a daughter of the Crusaders, in which she prays so fervently for Lord Kew's conversion. He is the "Q" who rescued the princess from the Arabs, and performed many a feat which lives in her glowing pages. He persists in saying that he never rescued Madame la Princesse from any Arabs at all, except from one beggar who was bawling out for bucksheesh, and whom Kew drove away with a stick. They made pilgrimages to all the holy places, and a piteous sight it was, said Lord Kew, to see the old prince in the Jerusalem processions at Easter pacing with bare feet and a candle. Here Lord Kew separated from the prince's party. His name does not occur in the last part of the Footprints; which, in truth, are filled full of strange rhapsodies, adventures which nobody was but the princess, and mystic disquisitions. She hesitates at nothing, like other poets of her nation: not profoundly learned, she invents where she has not acquired: mingles together religion and the opera; and performs Parisian pas-de-ballet before the gates of monasteries and the cells of anchorites. She describes, as if she had herself witnessed the catastrophe, the passage of the Red Sea: and, as if there were no doubt of the transaction, an unhappy love-affair between Pharaoh's eldest son and Moses's daughter. At Cairo, apropos of Joseph's granaries, she enters into a furious tirade against Putiphar, whom she paints as an old savage, suspicious and a tyrant. They generally have a copy of the Footprints of the Gazelles at the Circulating Library at Baden, as Madame d'Ivry constantly visits that watering-place. M. le Duc was not pleased with the book, which was published entirely without his concurrence, and which he described as one of the ten thousand follies of Madame la Duchesse.

This nobleman was five-and-forty years older than his duchess. France is the country where that sweet Christian institution of mariages de convenance (which so many folks of the family about which this story treats are engaged in arranging) is most in vogue. There the newspapers daily announce that M. de Foy has a bureau de confiance, where families may arrange marriages for their sons and daughters in perfect comfort and security. It is but a question of money on one side and the other. Mademoiselle has so many francs of dot; Monsieur has such and such rentes or lands in possession or reversion, an etude d'avoue, a shop with a certain clientele bringing him such and such an income, which may be doubled by the judicious addition of so much capital, and the pretty little matrimonial arrangement is concluded (the agent touching his percentage), or broken off, and nobody unhappy, and the world none the wiser. The consequences of the system I do not pretend personally to know; but if the light literature of a country is a reflex of its manners, and French novels are a picture of French life, a pretty society must that be into the midst of which the London reader may walk in twelve hours from this time of perusal, and from which only twenty miles of sea separate us.

When the old Duke d'Ivry, of the ancient ancient nobility of France, an emigrant with Artois, a warrior with Conde, an exile during the reign of the Corsican usurper, a grand prince, a great nobleman afterwards, though shorn of nineteen-twentieths of his wealth by the Revolution,--when the Duke d'Ivry lost his two sons, and his son's son likewise died, as if fate had determined to end the direct line of that noble house, which had furnished queens to Europe, and renowned chiefs to the Crusaders--being of an intrepid spirit, the Duke was ill disposed to yield to his redoubtable energy, in spite of the cruel blows which the latter had inflicted upon him, and when he was more than sixty years of age, three months before the July Revolution broke out, a young lady of a sufficient nobility, a virgin of sixteen, was brought out of the convent of the Sacre Coeur at Paris, and married with immense splendour and ceremony to this princely widower. The most august names signed the book of the civil marriage. Madame la Dauphine and Madame la Duchesse de Berri complimented the young bride with royal favours. Her portrait by Dubufe was in the Exhibition next year, a charming young duchess indeed, with black eyes, and black ringlets, pearls on her neck, and diamonds in her hair, as beautiful as a princess of a fairy tale. M. d'Ivry, whose early life may have been rather oragious, was yet a gentleman perfectly well conserved. Resolute against fate his enemy (one would fancy fate was of an aristocratic turn, and took especial delight in combats with princely houses; the Atridae, the Borbonidae, the Ivrys,--the Browns and Joneses being of no account), the prince seemed to be determined not only to secure a progeny, but to defy age. At sixty he was still young, or seemed to be so. His hair was as black as the princess's own, his teeth as white. If you saw him on the Boulevard de Gand, sunning among the youthful exquisites there, or riding au Bois, with a grace worthy of old Franconi himself, you would take him for one of the young men, of whom indeed up to his marriage he retained a number of the graceful follies and amusements, though his manners had a dignity acquired in old days of Versailles and the Trianon, which the moderns cannot hope to imitate. He was as assiduous behind the scenes of the opera as any journalist, or any young dandy of twenty years. He "ranged himself," as the French phrase is, shortly before his marriage, just like any other young bachelor: took leave of Phryne and Aspasie in the coulisses, and proposed to devote himself henceforth to his charming young wife.

The affreux catastrophe of July arrived. The ancient Bourbons were once more on the road to exile (save one wily old remnant of the race, who rode grinning over the barricades, and distributing poignees de main to the stout fists that had pummelled his family out of France). M. le Duc d'Ivry, who lost his place at court, his appointments which helped his income very much, and his peerage would no more acknowledge the usurper of Neuilly, than him of Elba. The ex-peer retired to his terres. He barricaded his house in Paris against all supporters of the citizen king; his nearest kinsman, M. de Florac, among the rest, who for his part cheerfully took his oath of fidelity, and his seat in Louis Philippe's house of peers, having indeed been accustomed to swear to all dynasties for some years past.

In due time Madame la Duchesse d'Ivry gave birth to a child, a daughter, whom her noble father received with but small pleasure. What the Duke desired, was an heir to his name, a Prince of Moncontour, to fill the place of the sons and grandsons gone before him, to join their ancestors in the tomb. No more children, however, blessed the old Duke's union. Madame d'Ivry went the round of all the watering-places: pilgrimages were tried: vows and gifts to all saints supposed to be favourable to the d'Ivry family, or to families in general:--but the saints turned a deaf ear; they were inexorable since the true religion and the elder Bourbons were banished from France.

Living by themselves in their ancient castles, or their dreary mansion of the Faubourg St. Germain, I suppose the Duke and Duchess grew tried of one another, as persons who enter into a mariage de convenance sometimes, nay, as those who light a flaming love-match, and run away with one another, will be found to do. A lady of one-and-twenty, and a gentleman of sixty-six, alone in a great castle, have not unfrequently a third guest at their table, who comes without a card, and whom they cannot shut out, though they keep their doors closed ever so. His name is Ennui, and many a long hour and weary night must such folks pass in the unbidden society of this Old Man of the Sea; this daily guest at the board; this watchful attendant at the fireside; this assiduous companion who will walk out with you; this sleepless restless bedfellow.

At first, M. d'Ivry, that well-conserved nobleman who never would allow that he was not young, exhibited no sign of doubt regarding his own youth except an extreme jealousy and avoidance of all other young fellows. Very likely Madame la Duchesse may have thought men in general dyed their hair, wore stays, and had the rheumatism. Coming out of the convent of the Sacre Coeur, how was the innocent young lady to know better? You see, in these mariages de convenance, though a coronet may be convenient to a beautiful young creature, and a beautiful young creature may be convenient to an old gentleman, there are articles which the marriage-monger cannot make to convene at all: tempers over which M. de Foy and his like have no control; and tastes which cannot be put into the marriage settlements. So this couple were unhappy, and the Duke and Duchess quarrelled with one another like the most vulgar pair who ever fought across a table.

In this unhappy state of home affairs, madame took to literature, monsieur to politics. She discovered that she was a great unappreciated soul, and when a woman finds that treasure in her bosom of course she sets her own price on the article. Did you ever see the first poems of Madame la Duchesse d'Ivry, Les Cris de l'Ame? She used to read them to her very intimate friends, in white, with her hair a good deal down her back. They had some success. Dubufe having painted her as a Duchess, Scheffer depicted her as a Muse. That was in the third year of her marriage, when she rebelled against the Duke her husband, insisted on opening her saloons to art and literature, and, a fervent devotee still, proposed to unite genius and religion. Poets had interviews with her. Musicians came and twanged guitars to her.

Her husband, entering her room, would fall over the sabre and spurs of Count Almaviva from the boulevard, or Don Basilio with his great sombrero and shoe-buckles. The old gentleman was breathless and bewildered in following her through all her vagaries. He was of old France, she of new. What did he know of the Ecole Romantique, and these jeunes gens with their Marie Tudors and Tours de Nesle, and sanguineous histories of queens who sewed their lovers into sacks, emperors who had interviews with robber captains in Charlemagne's tomb, Buridans and Hernanis, and stuff? Monsieur le Vicomte de Chateaubriand was a man of genius as a writer, certainly immortal; and M. de Lamartine was a young man extremely bien pensant, but, ma foi, give him Crebillon fils, or a bonne farce of M. Vade to make laugh; for the great sentiments, for the beautiful style, give him M. de Lormian (although Bonapartist) or the Abbe de Lille. And for the new school! bah! these little Dumass, and Hugos, and Mussets, what is all that? "M. de Lormian shall be immortal, monsieur," he would say, "when all these freluquets are forgotten." After his marriage he frequented the coulisses of the opera no more; but he was a pretty constant attendant at the Theatre Francais, where you might hear him snoring over the chefs-d'oeuvres of French tragedy.

For some little time after 1830, the Duchesse was as great a Carlist as her husband could wish; and they conspired together very comfortably at first. Of an adventurous turn, eager for excitement of all kinds, nothing would have better pleased the Duchesse than to follow MADAME in her adventurous courses in La Vendee, disguised as a boy above all. She was persuaded to stay at home, however, and aid the good cause at Paris; while Monsieur le Duc went off to Brittany to offer his old sword to the mother of his king. But MADAME was discovered up the chimney at Rennes, and all sorts of things were discovered afterwards. The world said that our silly little Duchess of Paris was partly the cause of the discovery. Spies were put upon her, and to some people she would tell anything. M. le Duc, on paying his annual visit to august exiles at Goritz, was very badly received: Madame la Dauphine gave him a sermon. He had an awful quarrel with Madame la Duchesse on returning to Paris. He provoked Monsieur le Comte Tiercelin, le beau Tiercelin, an officer of ordonnance of the Duke of Orleans, into a duel, a propos of a cup of coffee in a salon; he actually wounded the beau Tiercelin--he sixty-five years of age! his nephew, M. de Florac, was loud in praise of his kinsman's bravery.

That pretty figure and complexion which still appear so captivating in M. Dubufe's portrait of Madame la Duchesse d'Ivry, have long existed--it must be owned only in paint. "Je la prefere a l'huile," the Vicomte de Florac said of his cousin. "She should get her blushes from Monsieur Dubufe--those of her present furnishers are not near so natural." Sometimes the Duchess appeared with these postiches roses, sometimes of a mortal paleness. Sometimes she looked plump, on other occasions wofully thin. "When she goes into the world," said the same chronicler, "ma cousine surrounds herself with jupons--c'est pour defendre sa vertu: when she is in a devotional mood, she gives up rouge, roast meat, and crinoline, and fait maigre absolument." To spite the Duke her husband, she took up with the Vicomte de Florac, and to please herself she cast him away. She took his brother, the Abbe de Florac, for a director, and presently parted from him. "Mon frere, ce saint homme ne parle jamais de Madame la Duchesse, maintenant," said the Vicomte. "She must have confessed to him des choses affreuses--oh, oui!--affreuses ma parole d'honneur!"

The Duke d'Ivry being archiroyaliste, Madame la Duchesse must make herself ultra-Philippiste. "Oh, oui! tout ce qu'il y a de plus Madame Adelaide au monde!" cried Florac. "She raffoles of M. le Regent. She used to keep a fast of the day of the supplice of Philippe Egalite, Saint and Martyr. I say used, for to make to enrage her husband, and to recall the Abbe my brother, did she not advise herself to consult M. le Pasteur Grigou, and to attend the preach at his Temple? When this sheep had brought her shepherd back, she dismissed the Pasteur Grigou. Then she tired of M. l'Abbe again, and my brother is come out from her, shaking his good head. Ah! she must have put things into it which astonished the good Abbe! You know he has since taken the Dominican robe? My word of honour! I believe it was terror of her that drove him into a convent. You shall see him at Rome, Clive. Give him news of his elder, and tell him this gross prodigal is repenting amongst the swine. My word of honour! I desire but the death of Madame la Vicomtesse de Florac, to marry and range myself!

"After being Royalist, Philippist, Catholic, Huguenot, Madame d'Ivry must take to Pantheism, to bearded philosophers who believe in nothing, not even in clean linen, eclecticism, republicanism, what know I? All her changes have been chronicled by books of her composition. Les Demons, poem Catholic; Charles IX. is the hero and the demons are shot for the most part at the catastrophe of St. Bartholomew. My good mother, all good Catholic as she is, was startled by the boldness of this doctrine. Then there came Une Dragonnade, par Mme. la Duchesse d'Ivry, which is all on your side. That was of the time of the Pastor Grigou, that one. The last was Les Dieux dechus, poeme en 20 chants, par Mme. la D---- d'I. Guard yourself well from this Muse! If she takes a fancy to you she will never leave you alone. If you see her often, she will fancy you are in love with her, and tell her husband. She always tells my uncle--afterwards-- after she has quarrelled with you and grown tired of you! Eh, being in London once, she had the idea to make herself a Quakre; wore the costume, consulted a minister of that culte, and quarrelled with him as of rule. It appears the Quakers do not beat themselves, otherwise my poor uncle must have paid of his person.

"The turn of the philosophers then came, the chemists, the natural historians, what know I? She made a laboratory in her hotel, and rehearsed poisons like Madame de Brinvilliers--she spent hours in the Jardin des Plantes. Since she has grown affreusenent maigre and wears mounting robes, she has taken more than ever to the idea that she resembles Mary Queen of Scots. She wears a little frill and a little cap. Every man she loves, she says, has come to misfortune. She calls her lodgings Lochleven. Eh! I pity the landlord of Lochleven! She calls ce gros Blackball, vous savez, that pillar of estaminets, that prince of mauvais-ton, her Bothwell; little Mijaud, the poor little pianist, she named her Rizzio; young Lord Greenhorn who was here with governor, a Monsieur of Oxfort, she christened her Darnley, and the Minister Anglican, her John Knox! The poor man was quite enchanted! Beware of this haggard siren, my little Clive!--mistrust her dangerous song! Her cave is jonchee with the bones of her victims. Be you not one!"

Far from causing Clive to avoid Madame la Duchesse, these cautions very likely would have made him only the more eager to make her acquaintance, but that a much nobler attraction drew him elsewhere. At first, being introduced to Madame d'Ivry's salon, he was pleased and flattered, and behaved himself there merrily and agreeably enough. He had not studied Horace Vernet for nothing; he drew a fine picture of Kew rescuing her from the Arabs, with a plenty of sabres, pistols, burnouses, and dromedaries. He made a pretty sketch of her little girl Antoinette, and a wonderful likeness of Miss O'Grady, the little girl's governess, the mother's dame de compagnie;--Miss O'Grady, with the richest Milesian brogue, who had been engaged to give Antoinette the pure English accent. But the French lady's great eyes and painted smiles would not bear comparison with Ethel's natural brightness and beauty. Clive, who had been appointed painter in ordinary to the Queen of Scots, neglected his business, and went over to the English faction; so did one or two more of the Princess's followers, leaving her Majesty by no means well pleased at their desertion.

There had been many quarrels between M. d'Ivry and his next-of-kin. Political differences, private differences--a long story. The Duke, who had been wild himself, could not pardon the Vicomte de Florac for being wild. Efforts at reconciliation had been made which ended unsuccessfully. The Vicomte de Florac had been allowed for a brief space to be intimate with the chief of his family, and then had been dismissed for being too intimate. Right or wrong, the Duke was jealous of all young men who approached the Duchesse. "He is suspicious," Madame de Florac indignantly said, "because he remembers: and he thinks other men are like himself." The Vicomte discreetly said, "My cousin has paid me the compliment to be jealous of me," and acquiesced in his banishment with a shrug.

During the emigration the old Lord Kew had been very kind to exiles, M. d'Ivry amongst the number; and that nobleman was anxious to return to all Lord Kew's family when they came to France the hospitality which he had received himself in England. He still remembered or professed to remember Lady Kew's beauty. How many women are there, awful of aspect, at present, of whom the same pleasing legend is not narrated! It must be true, for do not they themselves confess it? I know of few things more remarkable or suggestive of philosophic contemplation than those physical changes.

When the old Duke and the old Countess met together and talked confidentially, their conversation bloomed into a jargon wonderful to hear. Old scandals woke up, old naughtinesses rose out of their graves, and danced, and smirked, and gibbered again, like those wicked nuns whom Bertram and Robert le Diable evoke from their sepulchres whilst the bassoon performs a diabolical incantation. The Brighton Pavilion was tenanted; Ranelagh and the Pantheon swarmed with dancers and masks; Perdita was found again, and walked a minuet with the Prince of Wales. Mrs. Clarke and the Duke of York danced together--a pretty dance. The old Duke wore a jabot and ailes-de-pigeon, the old Countess a hoop, and a cushion on her head. If haply the young folks came in, the elders modified their recollections, and Lady Kew brought honest old King George and good old ugly Queen Charlotte to the rescue. Her ladyship was sister of the Marquis of Steyne: and in some respects resembled that lamented nobleman. Their family had relations in France (Lady Kew had always a pied-a-terre at Paris, a bitter little scandal-shop, where les bien pensants assembled and retailed the most awful stories against the reigning dynasty). It was she who handed over le petit Kiou, when quite a boy, to Monsieur and Madame d'Ivry, to be lanced into Parisian society. He was treated as a son of the family by the Duke, one of whose many Christian names, his lordship, Francis George Xavier, Earl of Kew and Viscount Walham, bears. If Lady Kew hated any one (and she could hate very considerably) she hated her daughter-in-law, Walham's widow, and the Methodists who surrounded her. Kew remain among a pack of psalm-singing old women and parsons with his mother! Fi donc! Frank was Lady Kew's boy; she would form him, marry him, leave him her money if he married to her liking, and show him life. And so she showed it to him.

Have you taken your children to the National Gallery in London, and shown them the "Marriage a la Mode?" Was the artist exceeding the privilege of his calling in painting the catastrophe in which those guilty people all suffer? If this fable were not true, if many and many of your young men of pleasure had not acted it, and rued the moral, I would tear the page. You know that in our Nursery Tales there is commonly a good fairy to counsel, and a bad one to mislead the young prince. You perhaps feel that in your own life there is a Good Principle imploring you to come into its kind bosom, and a Bad Passion which tempts you into its arms. Be of easy minds good-natured people! Let us disdain surprises and coups-de-theatre for once; and tell those good souls who are interested about him, that there is a Good Spirit coming to the rescue of our young Lord Kew.

Surrounded by her court and royal attendants, La Reine Marie used graciously to attend the play-table, where luck occasionally declared itself for and against her Majesty. Her appearance used to create not a little excitement in the Saloon of Roulette, the game which she patronised, it being more "fertile of emotions" than the slower trente-et-quarante. She dreamed of numbers, had favourite incantations by which to conjure them: noted the figures made by peels of peaches and so forth, the numbers of houses, on hackney-coaches--was superstitious comme toutes les rimes poetiques. She commonly brought a beautiful agate bonbonniere full of gold pieces, when she played. It was wonderful to see her grimaces: to watch her behaviour: her appeals to heaven, her delight and despair. Madame la Baronne de la Cruchecassee played on one side of her, Madame la Comtesse de Schlanigenbad on the other. When she had lost all her money her Majesty would condescend to borrow--not from those ladies:--knowing the royal peculiarity, they never had any money; they always lost; they swiftly pocketed their winnings and never left a mass on the table, or quitted it, as courtiers will, when they saw luck was going against their sovereign. The officers of her household were Count Punter, a Hanoverian, the Cavaliere Spada, Captain Blackball of a mysterious English regiment, which might be any one of the hundred and twenty in the Army List, and other noblemen and gentlemen, Greeks, Russians, and Spaniards. Mr. and Mrs. Jones (of England), who had made the princess's acquaintance at Bagneres (where her lord still remained in the gout) and perseveringly followed her all the way to Baden, were dazzled by the splendour of the company in which they found themselves. Miss Jones wrote such letters to her dearest friend Miss Thompson, Cambridge Square, London, as caused that young person to crever with envy. Bob Jones, who had grown a pair of mustachios since he left home, began to think slightingly of poor little Fanny Thompson, now he had got into "the best Continental society." Might not he quarter a countess's coat on his brougham along with the Jones arms, or, more slap-up still, have the two shields painted on the panels with the coronet over? "Do you know the princess calls herself the Queen of Scots, and she calls me Julian Avenel?" says Jones delighted, to Clive, who wrote me about the transmogrification of our schoolfellow, an attorney's son, whom I recollected a snivelling little boy at Grey Friars. "I say, Newcome, the princess is going to establish an order," cried Bob in ecstasy. Every one of her aides-de-camp had a bunch of orders at his button, excepting, of course, poor Jones.

Like all persons who beheld her, when Miss Newcome and her party made their appearance at Baden, Monsieur de Florac was enraptured with her beauty. "I speak of it constantly before the Duchesse. I know it pleases her," so the Vicomte said. "You should have seen her looks when your friend M. Jones praised Miss Newcome! She ground her teeth with fury. Tiens ce petit sournois de Kiou! He always spoke of her as a mere sac d'argent that he was about to marry--an ingot of the cite--une fille de Lord Maire. Have all English bankers such pearls of daughters? If the Vicomtesse de Florac had but quitted the earth, dont elle fait l'ornement--I would present myself to the charmante meess and ride a steeple-chase with Kiou!" That he should win it the Viscount never doubted.

When Lady Anne Newcome first appeared in the ballroom at Baden, Madame la Duchesse d'Ivry begged the Earl of Kew (notre filleul, she called him) to present her to his aunt miladi and her charming daughter. "My filleul had not prepared me for so much grace," she said, turning a look towards Lord Kew, which caused his lordship some embarrassment. Her kindness and graciousness were extreme. Her caresses and compliments never ceased all the evening. She told the mother and the daughter too that she had never seen any one so lovely as Ethel. Whenever she saw Lady Anne's children in the walks she ran to them (so that Captain Blackball and Count Punter, A.D.C., were amazed at her tenderness), she etouffed them with kisses. What lilies and roses! What lovely little creatures! What companions for her own Antoinette. "This is your governess, Miss Quigli; mademoiselle, you must let me present you to Miss O'Gredi, your compatriot, and I hope your children will be always together." The Irish Protestant governess scowled at the Irish Catholic--there was a Boyne Water between them.

Little Antoinette; a lonely little girl, was glad to find any companions. "Mamma kisses me on the promenade," she told them in her artless way. "She never kisses me at home!" One day when Lord Kew with Florac and Clive were playing with the children, Antoinette said, "Pourquoi ne venez-vous plus chez nous, M. de Kew? And why does mamma say you are a lache? She said so yesterday to ces messieurs. And why does mamma say thou art only a vaurien, mon cousin? Thou art always very good for me. I love thee better than all those messieurs. Ma tante Florac a ete bonne pour moi a Paris aussi--Ah! qu'elle a ete bonne!"

"C'est que les anges aiment bien les petits cherubins, and my mother is an angel, seest thou," cries Florac, kissing her.

"Thy mother is not dead," said little Antoinette, "then why dost thou cry, my cousin?" And the three spectators were touched by this little scene and speech.

Lady Anne Newcome received the caresses and compliments of Madame la Duchesse with marked coldness on the part of one commonly so very good-natured. Ethel's instinct told her that there was something wrong in this woman, and she shrank from her with haughty reserve. The girl's conduct was not likely to please the French lady, but she never relaxed in her smiles and her compliments, her caresses, and her professions of admiration. She was present when Clara Pulleyn fell; and, prodigal of calineries and consolation, and shawls and scent-bottles, to the unhappy young lady, she would accompany her home. She inquired perpetually after the health of cette pauvre petite Miss Clara. Oh, how she railed against ces Anglaises and their prudery! Can you fancy her and her circle, the tea-table set in the twilight that evening, the court assembled, Madame de la Cruchecassee and Madame de Schlangenbad; and their whiskered humble servants, Baron Punter and Count Spada, and Marquis Iago, and Prince Iachimo, and worthy Captain Blackball? Can you fancy a moonlight conclave, and ghouls feasting on the fresh corpse of a reputation:--the gibes and sarcasms, the laughing and the gnashing of teeth? How they tear the dainty limbs, and relish the tender morsels!

"The air of this place is not good for you, believe me, my little Kew; it is dangerous. Have pressing affairs in England; let your chateau burn down; or your intendant run away, and pursue him. Partez, mon petit Kiou; partez, or evil will come of it." Such was the advice which a friend of Lord Kew gave the young nobleman. _

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