United States or United Arab Emirates ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
However, all governments have the politeness to afford one another these services, so that none of them can reproach the others. The small Conte d'Aranda after caressing me affectionately begged me to come and breakfast with him at his boarding-house, telling me that Mdlle. Viar would be glad to see me. The next day I took care not to fail in my appointment with the fair lady.
At six o'clock the next morning the abbe went off in the diligence, and I did not see him for six years. I spent the day with Madame d'Urfe, and I agreed, outwardly, that young d'Aranda should return to Paris as a postillion. I fixed our departure for the day after next.
She sent him to board with Viar, gave him masters on everything, and disguised him under the name of the Comte d'Aranda, although he was born at Bayreuth, and though his mother never had anything to do with a Spaniard of that name. It was three or four months before I went to see him, as I was afraid of being insulted on account of the name which the visionary Madame d'Urfe had given him.
When Louis XV heard of the nomination of the comte d'Aranda to the embassy from Spain to France, he observed to me, "The king of Spain gets rid of his Choiseul by sending him to me." "Then why not follow so excellent an example, sire?" replied I; "and since your Choiseul is weary of Chanteloup, why not command him upon some political errand to the court of Madrid."
"I had," she said, "in my desk a seal with the arms of the house of Aranda, and happening to take it up I shewed it him as we shew trinkets to children to amuse them, but as soon as he saw it he burst out, "'How came you to have my arms? "Your arms!" I answered. "I got this seal from the Comte d'Aranda; how can you prove that you are a scion of that race?"
"Heaven preserve me from such a thing," exclaimed Louis XV. "Such a man as he is ought never to quit the kingdom, and I have been guilty of considerable oversight to leave him the liberty of so doing. But to return to comte d'Aranda; he has some merit I understand; still I like not that class of persons around me; they are inexorable censors, who condemn alike every action of my life."
However, I was delighted to see his dexterity in penmanship, which was undoubtedly very great, and I expressed my satisfaction to Viar, who soon left us to ourselves. We proceeded into the garden. "Will you kindly inform me," I said, "how you can be so foolish as to call yourself the Comte d'Aranda?"
She told me that the young Count d'Aranda was quite well, and if I liked she would ask him to dinner the next day. I told her I should be delighted to see him, and then I informed her that the operation by which she was to become a man could not be performed till Querilinto, one of the three chiefs of the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross, was liberated from the dungeons of the Inquisition, at Lisbon.
I do not know whether he found his system a profitable one on the whole, but it was certainly so for me. The young Count d'Aranda, to whom I had restored his humble name of Trenti, was quite resigned, but proud of having given me a specimen of his knowingness by riding post.
Spain, enervated by the reign of Philip III. and Ferdinand VI., had recovered some degree of internal vitality and external dignity during the long reign of Charles III.; Campomanes, Florida Blanca, the Comte d'Aranda, his ministers, had struggled against superstition, that second nature of the Spaniards.
Word Of The Day