Stray Pearls: Memoirs of Margaret De Ribaumont, Viscountess of Bellaise by Yonge (management books to read .TXT) 📗
- Author: Yonge
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We were in high spirits, for our own King had marched into England while Cromwell was beating the covenanting rogues in Scotland, and Eustace was walking and riding out every day to persuade himself that he was in perfect health and fit to join his standard. That dear brother had promised that if he went to England I should come with him, and be left with old Mrs. Merrycourt, Harry’s mother, till Clement could come for me. Then Eustace, with his own lands again, could marry his Millicent, and throw over the Dutchman’s hoards, and thus we were full to the brim of joyous plans, and were walking out in the long avenue discussing them most gladly together, when, to add to our delight, Clement met us in his sober lawyer’s suit, which became him so well, coming home from a consultation.
The Queen-Regent had promised to convoke the States-General, and he explained to us both how all would come right there. The bourgeois element from all the Parliaments of the provinces would be strong enough to make a beginning towards controlling the noblesse, divided as it was, and at feud with the Crown. Some of the clergy at least would be on their side, and if the noblesse would bear part of the burthens of the State, and it could be established that taxes should not be imposed without the consent of the people, and that offices should not be sold, all would be well for the country. Meg herself took fire, and began to hope that a new state of things would begin in which she might do some good to those unfortunate peasants of her son’s who weighed so heavily on her tender heart. Eustace told him he would be another Simon de Montfort, only not a rebel. No; he was determined to succeed by moral force, and so was his whole party (at least he thought so). They, by their steady loyalty, would teach the young King and his mother how to choose between them and the two selfish factions who were ready to fight with the King himself, provided it was also against a Conde or a Mazarin.
It looked very beautiful indeed. I was roused from my selfish ill-humour, felt what my Clement was worth, and went heart and soul into the matter, and we all four were just as happy over these hopes as if we had not seen how things had turned out at home, and that no one, either Kings or Parliaments, or nobility either, know where to stop; but that if you do not get an absolute tyrant, you run the risk of a Long Parliament, a ruling army, a 30th of January, and a Lord Protector. But we were all young and hopeful still, and that straight walk in the Cours de la Reine was a paradise to some of us, if a fool’s paradise. For look you! in these great States-General, who but Clement Darpent the eloquent would make speeches, and win honours that would give him a right to rewards for higher than the hand of a poor exiled maiden, if I were still an exile? Though he declared that I had been his inspiration, and helped to brace him for the struggle, and far more truly, that my dear brother had shown him what a nobleman, bred under English law, could be, when neither ground down by the Crown, nor forced to do nothing but trample on his vassals.
And Meg began to hope for her Gaspard. She told how the young King was fond of him, and really seemed fired by some emulation at finding that a boy so much younger than himself knew more than he did. Our boy was reading Virgil and Plutarch’s lives. He told the stories to the young King, who delighted to listen, though the Duke of Anjou thought everything dull except cards, tennis, and gossip. The King was even beginning to read to himself. ‘And,’ said Clement, when he heard it, ‘let him be fired with the example of Agis or Clomenes, and what may he not do for France?’ Oh, yes! we were very happy, though we talked of hardly anything but politics. It was the last happy day we were to have for a good while to come.
CHAPTER XXVIII. — THE BOEUF GRAS (Annora’s Narrative)
I said it was a fool’s paradise, and it did not last long. The Queen-Regent had a convenient fashion of making nothing of her promises. She did not think base burghers and lawyers human creatures towards whom honour was necessary, and she naturally expected the States-General to act our Long Parliament over again.
It seems that Kings of France come of age at fourteen; and on the day that young Louis was thirteen he was declared to be major, and his mother ceased to be Regent, though she managed everything just as much as if she had still written Anne R. at the end of all the State papers. The advantage to the Court was that no promises or engagements made in his minority were considered to be binding. And so the whole matter of the States-General went to the wall.
There was a magnificent ceremony at the Parliament House, the old hall of the Augustins. The little King held a bed of justice, upon a couch under a purple velvet canopy, with all his grandees round him. I would not go to see it, I thought it a wicked shame to set up a poor boy to break all the solemn pledges made in his name, and I knew it was the downfall of Clement’s hopes; but Meg went in her Princess’s suite, and I had her account of it, the King looking very handsome with his long fair hair, and bowing right and left, with such a dignity and grace that no one saw what a little bit of a fellow he really was. Poor child! the best thing they could have taught him would have been to worshipping and loving no one but himself. Of course Meg saw nothing so plainly as how beautiful her little Marquis looked among the attendant young nobles, and I must own that he was a very fine fellow, and wonderfully little spoiled considering the sort of folk with whom he lived. On that ceremonial day there came doleful tidings to us. Worcester had been the scene of a massacre rather than a fight, and my brother was in despair and misery at not having been there—as if his single arm could have retrieved the day!—thinking shame of himself for resting at home while sword and block were busy with our friends, and no one knew where the King was. I know not whether it were the daunting of his hopes or the first beginning of the winter cold; but from that time he began to decline from the strength he had gained while I had him to myself in Holland, free from all pressing cares.
However, he still rode out in attendance on the Duke of Gloucester, who always preferred him to any other of the gentlemen who waited on the
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