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Updated: June 19, 2025
When he let himself in with his pass-key, there were two men in the entry. Without stopping to speak, he ran up to his own chambers. When he got into his sitting-room, there stood De Fleuri, who simply waved his hand towards the old sofa. On it lay an elderly man, with his eyes half open, and a look almost of idiocy upon his pale, puffed face, which was damp and shining.
I dare say, Count, you have already, in England, seen enough of a court to know that there are some people who are as human echoes, and have no existence except in the noise occasioned by another." I took care that my answer should not be a witticism, lest Fleuri should think I was attempting to rival him; and so we passed on in an excellent humour with each other.
At the end of a year the bet was declared off; but in the course of three years he received his pardon from the king, and appeared at Court in woman's dress, wearing the cross of St. Louis. Louis XV. had always been aware of the chevalier's sex, but Cardinal Fleuri had taught him that it became kings to be impenetrable, and Louis remained so all his life.
Fleuri, whose policy at that period was very like that of the concealed Queen, and who was, besides, far from desirous of introducing any new claimants on Madame de Maintenon's official favour, though he might not object to introduce them to a private friend, was not slow in taking the hint. He rose, and I was forced to follow his example.
The French say of Fleuri that "he lived from day to day seeking only to have quiet in his old age. He had stupefied France with opiates, instead of laboring to cure her. He could not even prolong this silent sleep until his own death." When the war broke out between England and Spain, "the latter claimed the advantage of her defensive alliance with France.
Mark me: Fleuri has no /faux-brillant/, no genius, indeed, of very prominent order; but he is one of those soft and smooth minds which, in a crisis like the present, when parties are contending and princes wrangling, always slip silently and unobtrusively into one of the best places.
"What think you of Madame?" asked Fleuri. "What can I think of her," said I, cautiously, "but that greatness seems in her to take its noblest form, that of simplicity?" "True," rejoined Fleuri; "never was there so meek a mind joined to so lowly a carriage! Do you remark any trace of former beauty?"
Nothing could be pleasanter than his signing himself, in a letter to Cardinal Quirini, 'Fleuri, Eveque de Frejus par l'indignation divine. The King does not like him much; but he is a good man on the whole, though jesuitical; he shall introduce you."
"What!" said Fleuri, joining me and saluting Hamilton, who had just turned to depart, "what, Count Antoine! Does anything but whim bring you here to-day?" "No," answered Hamilton; "I am only here for the same purpose as the poor go to the temples of Caitan, /to inhale the steam of those good things which I see the priests devour/."
For many years he had fits of shame, and of grief without repentance; for repentance is the active, the divine part the turning again; but taking more steadily both to strong drink and opium, he was at the time when De Fleuri found him only the dull ghost of Andrew Falconer walking in a dream of its lost carcass. Once more Falconer retired, but not to take his violin. He could play no more.
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