Stray Pearls: Memoirs of Margaret De Ribaumont, Viscountess of Bellaise by Yonge (summer reads txt) 📕

had a great gift of eloquence, but that he was embarked on a very dangerous course. Moreover, M. Darpent had been chosen as a deputy of the Town Council at the Hotel de Ville. This council consisted of the mayor and echevins, as they called them, who were something like our aldermen, all the parish priests, deputies from the trades, and from all the sixteen quarters of the city, and more besides. They had the management of the affairs of the city in their hands, and Clement Darpent, owning a house, and being respected by the respectable citizens of his department of St. Antoine, was chosen to represent it. Thus he felt himself of use, which always rejoiced him. As to me, I only saw him once that whole autumn, and then I met him by accident as I was walking with Eustace and Margaret in the Cours de la Reine. [footnote: the Champs-Elysees]

We were in high spirits, for our own King had marched into England while Cromwell was beating the covenanting rogues in Scotland, and Eustace was walking and riding out every day to persuade himself that he was in perfect health and fit to join his standard. That dear brother had promised that if he went to England I should come with him, and be left with old Mrs. Merrycourt, Harry’s mother, till Clement could come for me. Then Eustace, with his own lands again, could marry his Millicent, and throw over the Dutchman’s hoards, and thus we were full to the brim of joyous plans, and were walking out in the long avenue discussing them most gladly together, when, to add to our delight, Clement met us in his sober lawyer’s suit, which became him so well, coming home from a consultation.

The Queen-Regent had promised to convoke the States-General, and he explained to us both how all would come right there. The bourgeois element from all the Parliaments of the provinces would be strong enough to make a beginning towards controlling the noblesse, divided as it was, and at feud with the Crown. Some of the clergy at least would be on their side, and if the noblesse would bear part of the burthens of the State, and it could be established that taxes should not be imposed without the consent of the people, and that offices should not be sold, all would be well for the country. Meg herself took fire, and began to hope that a new state of things would begin in which she might do some good to those unfortunate peasants of her son’s who weighed so heavily on her tender heart. Eustace told him he would be another Simon de Montfort, only not a rebel. No; he was determined to succeed by moral force, and so was his whole party (at least he thought so). They, by their steady loyalty, would teach the young King and his mother how to choose between them and the two selfish factions who were ready to fight with the King himself, provided it was also against a Conde or a Mazarin.

It looked very beautiful indeed. I was roused from my selfish ill-humour, felt what my Clement was worth, and went heart and soul into the matter, and we all four were just as happy over these hopes as if we had not seen how things had turned out at home, and that no one, either Kings or Parliaments, or nobility either, know where to stop; but that if you do not get an absolute tyrant, you run the risk of a Long Parliament, a ruling army, a 30th of January, and a Lord Protector. But we were all young and hopeful still, and that straight walk in the Cours de la Reine was a paradise to some of us, if a fool’s paradise. For look you! in these great States-General, who but Clement Darpent the eloquent would make speeches, and win honours that would give him a right to rewards for higher than the hand of a poor exiled maiden, if I were still an exile? Though he declared that I had been his inspiration, and helped to brace him for the struggle, and far more truly, that my dear brother had shown him what a nobleman, bred under English law, could be, when neither ground down by the Crown, nor forced to do nothing but trample on his vassals.

And Meg began to hope for her Gaspard. She told how the young King was fond of him, and really seemed fired by some emulation at finding that a boy so much younger than himself knew more than he did. Our boy was reading Virgil and Plutarch’s lives. He told the stories to the young King, who delighted to listen, though the Duke of Anjou thought everything dull except cards, tennis, and gossip. The King was even beginning to read to himself. ‘And,’ said Clement, when he heard it, ‘let him be fired with the example of Agis or Clomenes, and what may he not do for France?’ Oh, yes! we were very happy, though we talked of hardly anything but politics. It was the last happy day we were to have for a good while to come.