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It is difficult to conceive a duller place than Saint Germains was when he held his Court there; and yet there was scarcely in all Europe a residence more enviably situated than that which the generous Lewis had assigned to his suppliants. The woods were magnificent, the air clear and salubrious, the prospects extensive and cheerful.
The ladies of the party did not escape his censure. He allowed that Flora Mac-Ivor was a fine woman, and Rose Bradwardine a pretty girl. But he alleged that the former destroyed the effect of her beauty by an affectation of the grand airs which she had probably seen practised in the mock court of St. Germains.
He looked so long that the Dean was preparing to take his hat in his hand ready for a start. He showed that he was going to move, and then the Marquis went on speaking. "Sacred! Ah! and such a child!" "She is one of whom I am proud as a father, and you should be proud as a sister-in-law." "Oh, of course. So I am. The Germains were never so honoured before.
Soon, however, the magnificent King conceived an inexplicable disgust for his birthplace. He quitted Saint Germains for Versailles, and expended sums almost fabulous in the vain attempt to create a paradise on a spot singularly sterile and unwholesome, all sand or mud, without wood, without water, and without game.
He was as firm a Roman Catholic as ever, and as staunch an advocate for the Stuarts and the divine right of kings; but his religion almost amounted to asceticism, and the conduct of those with whom he had been brought in such close contact at St. Germains would little bear the inspection of a stern moralist.
James himself was daily expected. In fact he had already left Saint Germains. Berwick, however, would not wait. He took the road to Paris, met his father at Clermont, and made a full report of the state of things in England.
He who was of the same age as little Francis, whom we shall henceforth call Viscount Castlewood here, was H. R. H. the Prince of Wales, born in the same year and month with Frank, and just proclaimed at Saint Germains, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland.
I told Robert I was glad to see him, and he answered me with ease and civility. "I expected you yesterday," said Michael Arout, rather dryly. "Forgive me, father," replied the young workman, "but I had business at St. Germains. I was not able to come back till it was very late, and then the master kept me." The joiner looked at his son sideways, and then took up his hammer again.
Germains in the same palace with mademoiselle Charlotta so transported him, that he scarce knew what he said; and the thanks he gave the prince were expressed with such hyperboles of gratitude, as made his highness think he had a higher idea of the employment than it indeed deserved; but the baron who knew the motive, and could not help smiling within himself, to prevent any other from suspecting it, however, told the prince, that it was not to be wondered at that he testified so high a satisfaction, since he was now to serve a family he had by nature a strong attachment to, and at the same time continue in a country he liked much better than his own.
It might be also that he was conspiring against his own legitimate nephew; and if so, the conspiracy would of course fail, and he would be stigmatised for ever among the Germains as the most sordid and vile of the name. The Dean's house was in the Close, joined on to the Cathedral, a covered stone pathway running between the two.
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