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"Precede me, Hector," she said with consummate dignity, "to M. le Comte's audience chamber." And with hands folded before her, her aristocratic head very erect, her mouth and eyes composed to reposeful majesty, she sailed out through the mahogany doors in a style which no one who had never curtsied to the Bien-aimé Monarque could possibly hope to imitate.
The regent, Duke of Orleans, entertained the same notions of kingly education, on this head, as his predecessor the cardinal; and Louis le Bien-aimé, like his great-grandfather before him, was the best dancer of his realm. Such dancing as it was! such exquisite footing!
In her beautiful prime, so it was said, she had done her part to win for that monarch his appellation of le Bien-aime. Of her past charms of feature, little remained save a remarkably prominent slender nose, curved like a Turkish scimitar, now the principal ornament of a countenance that put you in mind of an old white glove.
La Motte higgled very hard for more, and talked pathetically of his services and his wounds for he had been a most distinguished and courageous campaigner but Alonzo was implacable. Moreover, one Robert Bien-Aime, Prior of Renty, was present at all the conferences. This ecclesiastic was a busy intriguer, but not very adroit.
From 1800 to 1805, that is, for five years, the doctor enjoyed all the pleasures of educating Flore without the annoyances which the ambitions and pretensions of Mademoiselle de Romans inflicted, it is said, on Louis le Bien-Aime.
Calvert to His Majesty as "son jeune et bien-aimé secrétaire, qui avait servi dans la guerre de l'indépendence sous le drapeau de la France, commandé par Monsieur de Lafayette, pour qu'il avait un respect le plus profond et une amitié la plus vive," the young man was quite overcome by the graciousness of his reception and retained for the rest of his life a very lively impression of the King's kind treatment of him.
The court had accompanied the king and queen to Choisy, and thither had flocked the representatives of every class in Paris, to do homage to the king and wish him a prosperous reign. The people seemed wild with joy, and nobody vouchsafed a thought to the memory of the "Bien-aime," whose body was even now being taken to its last rest, in the vaults of St. Denis.
The pot-au-feu hangs in the great chimney over the blazing logs; the village gossips are there the postilion in his clumsy jack-boots, the housewife, and the curé with a friend sipping his glass of red wine and on the walls Louis le bien-aimé, with baton and perruque, is balanced by Sanctus Paulus, with a sword much bigger than himself, or by the "Ordonnances de Monsieur le Duc de Choiseul, Grand Maître des Postes et Relais de France."
People hailed him as Louis le Bien-Aimé; even the callous heart of the king was pierced by their loyalty and he cried, "What have I done to deserve such love?" So easy was it to win the affection of this warm-hearted people. The brilliant victories of Marshal Saxe, and the consequent Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, brought some years of prosperity.
Évariste Gamelin himself, stern-tempered as he was, when he recovered his twopenny knife from Élodie's lap, recited the going down of Grisbourdon into hell, with a good deal of spirit. The citoyenne Thévenin sang without accompaniment Nina's ballad: "Quand le bien-aimé reviendra."
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