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Every interest was made at the time to assuage his majesty's hostility, but the influence of the Marquis of Recambours was too strong, and the king at last peremptorily forbade Leslie's name being mentioned before him.
He has now been over sixteen years in prison, and has therefore paid dearly for thwarting your will, and his wife has all this time been confined in a convent. They are the father and mother of this brave lad Colonel Leslie, who commanded your majesty's regiment of Scotch Dragoons, and his wife, the Countess Amelie of Recambours.
"The convent of Our Lady at Tours," Ronald ventured to put in. "Oh! you have discovered that, eh?" the king said with a smile; and then turned again to the secretary "bidding her suffer the Countess Amelie de Recambours to leave the convent and to proceed where she will." The secretary bowed and retired.
"Colonel Hume first introduced me to him, and as he too had known my father he promised that should he obtain a victory he would ask as a boon from the king the release of my father, and he did so after Fontenoy, where the Marquis de Recambours was killed, and the king thereby freed from his influence.
The king may grant a lettre de cachet, as these orders are called, to a favourite; but even in France men are not put to death without some sort of trial, and even Chateaurouge and De Recambours could not ask Louis to have a man murdered in prison to gratify their private spite, especially when that man was a brave Scottish officer whose fate had already excited much discontent among his compatriots in the king's service.
"Now I think of it," Malcolm said, "one of the officers I served under had a relation, a lady, whom I have heard him say, when he was talking to another officer, is shut up here, either because she wouldn't marry some one her father didn't want her to, I forget exactly what it was now. Let me see, what was her name. Elise no, that wasn't it. Amelie Amelie de Recambours yes, that was it."
"Your father's enemies have evidently been at work, and have been poisoning the king's mind. He read the memorial, and then said harshly, 'The Countess of Recambours has forfeited all rights to her mother's estates by marrying an alien.
Leslie of Glenlyon, prince, was colonel of the Scottish Dragoons, and as gallant and dashing a soldier as ever was in the service of the King of France, and as good looking a one too; and the result was, the daughter of the Marquis de Recambours, one of the richest heiresses in France, whom her father and the king destined as the bride of this Duke of Chateaurouge, who was then quite a young man, fell in love with Leslie, and a secret marriage took place between them.
"The Countess Amelie de Recambours is hereby ordered to withdraw at once to her estate of La Grenouille and there to await the king's pleasure concerning her." The king's signature was affixed. "Well, that is not so very bad," the countess said. "At any rate my right to one of my mother's estates is recognized. La Grenouille is the smallest of them, and contains but three or four farms.
By some of these who had known her before her marriage he was kindly received; but all told him that it would be hopeless to make any efforts for the release of his father as long as the Marquis de Recambours remained alive and high in favour at court, and that any movement in that direction would be likely to do harm rather than good.
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