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Updated: June 27, 2025
He had forgotten that if M. Mornay had not made it easy for him, and had not refrained from insisting on his pound of flesh, he would now be insolvent and with no roof over him. Like many another man Jean Jacques was the occasional slave of formula, and also the victim of phases of his own temperament. In truth he had not realized how big a thing M. Mornay had done for him.
The result was the preparation of the celebrated memoir, under Coligny's directions, by young De Mornay, Seigneur de Plessis. The document was certainly not a paper of the highest order. It did not appeal to the loftier instincts which kings or common mortals might be supposed to possess.
They found the city in a state of defense, M. de Vezin having heard rumors of the advance. "Ah!" said the king, "he is warned; that is very annoying." "We must lay siege in due form, sire," said Mornay; "we expect still about 2,000 men, and that is enough." "Let us assemble the council and begin the trenches." Chicot listened to all this in amazement.
"You will know to-morrow; meanwhile, lie down there on those cushions on my left; here is Mornay snoring already at my right." "Peste!" said Chicot, "he makes more noise asleep than awake." "It is true he is not very talkative; but see him at the chase." Day had partly appeared, when a great noise of horses awoke Chicot.
Such being the royal humour at the moment, it may well be believed that Duplessis Mornay would find but little sunshine from on high on the occasion of his famous but forgotten conferences with Du Perron, now archbishop of Evreux, before the king and all the court at Fontainebleau.
There was another illustrious personage in a foreign land who ever rendered homage to the character of the retired Netherland statesman. Amid the desolation of France, Duplessis Mornay often solaced himself by distant communion with that kindred and sympathizing spirit.
"You've lost more with less justification," retorted the Judge, who, in his ninetieth year, was still as alive as his friend at sixty. M. Mornay waved a hand in acknowledgment, and rolled his cigar from corner to corner of his mouth. "Oh, I've lost a lot more in my time, Judge, but with a squint in my eye! But I'm doing this with no astigmatism. I've got the focus."
On the day he sold his farm he was by no means out of danger of absolute insolvency he was in fact ruined; but he was not yet the victim of those processes which would make him legally insolvent. "I like his pluck, but still, ten to one, he loses," remarked M. Mornay to Judge Carcasson. "He is an unlucky man, and I agree with Napoleon that you oughtn't to be partner with an unlucky man."
Yet sardonically piteous as it was, the incident had shown Jean Jacques with the germ of something big in him. He had recognized in M. Mornay, who could level him to the dust tomorrow financially, a master of the world's affairs, a prospector of life's fields, who would march fearlessly beyond the farthest frontiers into the unknown.
M. Mornay chanced to be a friend of Judge Carcasson, and when he visited Vilray he remembered that the Judge had spoken often of his humble but learned friend, the Clerk of the Court, and of his sister. So M. Mornay made his way from the office of the firm of avocats whom he had instructed in his affairs with Jean Jacques, to that of M. Fille.
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