CHAPTER XIV.
COURT APPOINTMENT
The expected descent on the Isle of Wight did not take place, for
though Prince Rupert was High Admiral, so large a portion of the
fleet was disaffected that it was not possible to effect anything.
Before long, he went back to the ships he had at Helvoetsluys, taking
the Prince of Wales with him. My brother Walwyn yielded to an
earnest entreaty that he would let us take care of him at Paris till
there was some undertaking really in hand. Besides, he was awaiting
the issue of his cause respecting the Ribaumont property in Picardy,
to which the Count de Poligny set up a claim in right of a grant by
King Henry III. in the time of the League. It must be confessed that
the suit lingered a good deal, in spite of the zeal of the young
advocate, M. Clement Darpent,--nay, my mother ad my brother De
Solivet sometimes declared, because of his zeal; for the Darpent
family were well known as inclined to the Fronde party.
They had been Huguenots, but had joined the Church some twenty years
before, as it was said, because of the increased disabilities of
Huguenots in the legal profession, and it was averred that much of
the factious Calvinist leaven still hung about them. At this time I
never saw the parents, but Eustace had contracted a warm friendship
with the son, and often went to their house. My mother fretted over
this friendship far more, as Annora used to declare, than if he had
been intimate with the wildest of the roistering cavaliers, or the
most dissipated of the petits maitres of Paris.
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