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What could go wrong in a world where noble ladies lived in palaces hung with tapestry and damask, with powdered lacqueys to wait on them, a turbaned blackamoor to tend their parrots and monkeys, a coronet-coach at the door to carry them to mass or the ridotto, and a handsome cicisbeo to display on the promenade?
"And instead of that, I am obliged to humble myself before that Bishop whom I despise, to endure the scorn of his lacqueys, and the offensive patronage of his secretary, to have the opportunity of saying: "'A little place in your good graces, Monseigneur! No, a thousand times no. My village, my poor belfry, my humble parsonage, my liberty, and my Suzanne!"
A very few days inhabitancy where Master Roy was of the party, had assured this lady that the page must be ridded. She wished him no ill: you do not wish ill to the earwig which you brush out of the window. But she had no thought of amending the mistakes of Providence. Great ladies who are really great do not go to work to have inconvenient lacqueys stabbed.
Arrived at the inn, where, it seemed, he had already bespoken the whole of the first floor, he led Virginia upstairs with the greatest deference, hat in hand, past the bowing landlord and all his array of scullions, maidservants, lacqueys, porters and cooks; and took no more notice of me than he had done of the horde of beggars at the door.
I entered an enormous ante-room in which stood officers, footmen, pages, and lacqueys, all gazing at me with the greatest astonishment. I asked if my lord was to be seen, and begged the door-keeper to send in my name. He did not answer, but sighed, and went into his master's room. Directly after, he came out and begged me, with a profound bow, to step in.
There is come lately to live in our Square, at Kensington, a grocer's widow from London Bridge, whose daughters have three gowns where I have one; and who, though they are waited on but by a man and a couple of maids, I know eat and drink a thousand times better than we do with our scraps of cold meat on our plate, and our great flaunting, trapesing, impudent, lazy lacqueys!"
Servants, lacqueys, and enjoying the privileges of ubiquity of lacqueys, yet, at the same time, men of good birth and high breeding, good at the sword and at the lute; bound to amuse this highborn woman, fading away in the monotony of feudal life, with few books to read or unable to read them, and far above all the household concerns which devolve on the butler, the cellarer, the steward, the gentleman, honourably employed as a servant.
He knew and understood how to make use of what remained of the old committees of sections, of "septembriseurs" without occupation, lacqueys, perfumers, dentists, dancing masters without pupils, all the refuse of the revolution, the women of the Palais-Royal: such was the army he commanded, having as his lieutenants Desmarets, an unfrocked priest, and Veyrat, formerly a Genevese convict, who had been branded and whipped by the public executioner.
Chariots and horsemen, torch-bearers and lacqueys, followed in order. "Then came the first chariot of the grand masquers, which was not so large as those that went before, but most curiously framed, carved, and painted with exquisite art, and purposely for this service and occasion. The form of it was after that of the Roman triumphant chariots.
Her eye was brilliant, and her colour matched it. She held her head with the old dauntless carriage, and there was that in her voice before which her women quaked, and her lacqueys hurried to do her bidding. Devil himself felt this same thing in the touch of her hand upon his bridle when she mounted him at the door, and seemed to glance askance at her sideways.
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