Darpent, because she
did not like my brother's friendship with any one not noble, but she
was as glad to see him then as if he had been a Montmorency or a
Coucy.
I always like his manners, for they were even then more English than
French. Though going through all due form, he always seemed to
respect himself too much to let any one be supercilious with him; and
however she might begin at a vast distance, she always ended by
talking to him just as if he were, as she called it, our equal. As
if he were not infinitely the superior of the hundreds of trumpery
little apes of nobles who strutted about the galleries of the Louvre,
with nothing to do but mayhap to carry the Queen's fan, or curl her
poodle's tail!
I see I have been writing just as I felt in those fervent days of my
youth, when the quick blood would throb at my heart and burn in my
cheek at any slight to the real manhood and worth I saw in him, and
preference for the poor cringing courtiers I despised. The thought
of those old days has brought me back to the story as all then seemed
to me--the high-spirited, hot-tempered maiden, who had missed all her
small chances of even being mild and meek in the troubles at home,
and to whom Paris was a grievous place of banishment, only tolerable
by the aid of my dear brother and my poor Meg, when she was not too
French and too Popish for me. But that was not her fault, poor
thing.
My mother, however, was grateful enough to Clement Darpent for the
nonce, when he told how he had seen Meg safe beyond the gates.
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