When I had fished my dinner, and drank the King of
France’s health, to satisfy my mind that I bore him no
spleen, but, on the contrary, high honour for the humanity of his
temper,—I rose up an inch taller for the accommodation.
—No—said I—the Bourbon is by no means a
cruel race: they may be misled, like other people; but there is a
mildness in their blood. As I acknowledged this, I felt a
suffusion of a finer kind upon my cheek—more warm and
friendly to man, than what Burgundy (at least of two livres a
bottle, which was such as I had been drinking) could have
produced.
—Just God! said I, kicking my portmanteau aside, what is
there in this world’s goods which should sharpen our
spirits, and make so many kind-hearted brethren of us fall out so
cruelly as we do by the way?
When man is at peace with man, how much lighter than a feather
is the heaviest of metals in his hand! he pulls out his purse,
and holding it airily and uncompressed, looks round him, as if he
sought for an object to share it with.—In doing this, I
felt every vessel in my frame dilate,—the arteries beat all
cheerily together, and every power which sustained life,
performed it with so little friction, that ’twould have
confounded the most physical précieuse in France;
with all her materialism, she could scarce have called me a
machine.—
I’m confident, said I to myself, I should have overset
her creed.
The accession of that idea carried nature, at that time, as
high as she could go;—I was at peace with the world before,
and this finish’d the treaty with myself.—
—Now, was I King of France, cried I—what a
moment for an orphan to have begg’d his father’s
portmanteau of me!
