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He gave Lady Davenant a description of what he had been so fortunate as to see the first public dinner of the king of France on his restoration, served according to all the ci-devant ceremonials, and in the etiquette of Louis the Fourteenth's time.
The place had a certain grandeur of its own, for the massive decorations, the heavy furniture, and the rich brocade curtains all dated from the best period of Louis the Fourteenth's reign.
Napoleon has words in him which are like Austerlitz Battles. Louis Fourteenth's Marshals are a kind of poetical men withal; the things Turenne says are full of sagacity and geniality, like sayings of Samuel Johnson. The great heart, the clear deep-seeing eye: there it lies; no man whatever, in what province soever, can prosper at all without these.
Then opens a new scene and a new century; Lewis the Fourteenth's good fortune forsakes him, till the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene make him amends for all the mischief they had done him, by making the allies refuse the terms of peace offered by him at Gertruydenberg.
Later, in the age of etiquette, it will show us Scarron on the very edge of Louis the Fourteenth's bed. Meanwhile it decorates coats of-arms, and draws upon knight, shields the symbolic hieroglyphs of feudalism. From the manners, it makes its way into the laws, numberless strange customs at test its passage through the institutions of the Middle Ages.
I know, indeed, that public men of the highest rank have resorted to this expedient long ago. Dumas's novel of the "Iron Mask" turns on the brutal imprisonment of Louis the Fourteenth's double.
There is, in fact, no liberty of the press. It is permitted to write against Barrere or the Jacobins, because they are no longer in power; but a single word of disrespect towards the Convention is more certain of being followed by a Lettre de Cachet, than a volume of satire on any of Louis the Fourteenth's ministers would have been formerly.
"It was Louis Quatorze who made the court; not his queen." "Well," said Waldershare, "all the same, I fear King Florestan will adopt no one in this room, though he has several friends here, and I am one; and I believe that he will marry, and I cannot help fancying that the partner of this throne will not be as insignificant as Louis the Fourteenth's wife, or Catherine of Braganza."
She wore a dress of the later years of Louis the Fourteenth's reign, magnificent and severe, of embroidered satin and black velvet, without the adornment of a single jewel.
There is, in fact, no liberty of the press. It is permitted to write against Barrere or the Jacobins, because they are no longer in power; but a single word of disrespect towards the Convention is more certain of being followed by a Lettre de Cachet, than a volume of satire on any of Louis the Fourteenth's ministers would have been formerly.
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