Are you to be at Madame de Choisy's ball'
I was quite provoked with him for being able to think of such matters
when his father's rescue was at stake; but he bade me ask his mother
and mine whether it were not an important question, and then told me
that he must make me understand the little comedy in which he was an
actor.
Prince as he was, I could not help saying that I cared more for the
tragedy in which we all might be actors; and he shrugged his
shoulders, and said that life would be insupportable if all were to
be taken in the grand serious way. However, Prince Rupert appealed
to him, and he was soon absorbed into the consultation.
My brother told us the next morning of the plan. It was that Prince
Rupert, with the ships which he had in waiting at Harfleur, should
take a trusty band of cavaliers from Paris, surprise Carisbrooke, and
carry off His Sacred Majesty. Eustace was eager to go with them, and
would listen to no representations from my mother of the danger his
health would incur in such an expedition in the month of November.
She wept and entreated in vain.
'What was his life good for,' he said, 'but to be given for the
King's service?'
Then she appealed to me to persuade him, but he looked at me with his
bright blue eyes and said:
'Meg learned better in Lorraine;' and I went up and kissed him with
tears in my eyes, and said: 'Ah! Madame, we have all had to learn how
loyalty must come before life, and what is better than life.
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