tion, it is said, of a liberal money-payment to the merry
monarch and his yet more merry mistresses.

{116}

CHAPTER VII.

THE WHITE COCKADE.

[Sidenote: 1715--Bolingbroke at St. Germains]

When Bolingbroke got to Paris he did not immediately attach himself to
the service of James. Even then and there he still appears to have
been undecided. In the modern American phrase, he "sat on the fence"
for a while. Probably, if he had seen even then a chance of returning
with safety to England, if the impeachments had not been going on, and
if any manner of overture had been made to him from London, he would
forthwith have dropped the Jacobite cause, and returned to profess his
loyalty to the reigning English sovereign. After a while, however,
seeing that there was no chance for him at home, he went openly into
the cause of the Stuarts, and accepted the office of Secretary of State
to James. It must have been a trying position for a man of
Bolingbroke's genius and ambition when he found himself thus compelled
to put up with an empty office at a sham court. Bolingbroke's desire
was to play on a great stage, with a vast admiring audience. He loved
the heat and passion of debate; he enjoyed his own rhetorical triumphs.
He must have been chilled and cramped indeed in a situation which
allowed him no opportunity of displaying his most splendid and genuine
qualities, while it constantly called on him for the exercise of the
very qualities which he had least at hand. Nature had never meant him
for a conspirator, or even for a subtle political intriguer; nor,
indeed, had Nature ever intended him to be the adherent of a lost
cause. All that could have made a position like his tolerable to a man
of his peculiar capacity would have been faith in the cause--that faith
which would have {117} prevented him from seeing any but its noble and
exalted qualities, and would have made him forget himself in its hopes,
its perils, its triumphs, and its disasters. On the contrary, it would
seem that Bolingbroke found it difficult to take the Stuart cause
seriously, even when he was himself playing the part of its leading
statesman. A critical observer writes from Paris in the early part of
the year 1716, saying that he believed Bolingbroke's chief fault was
"that he could not play his part with a grave enough face; he could not
help laughing now and then at such kings and queens." Meantime,
Bolingbroke amused himself in his mome