character.
His own character, however, was not without its weak parts. The
consciousness that he was of plebeian origin was the torment of
his life. He pined for nobility with a pining at once pitiable and
ludicrous. Able, experienced and accomplished as he was, he sometimes,
under the influence of this mental disease, descended to the level of
Moliere's Jourdain, and entertained malicious observers with scenes
almost as laughable as that in which the honest draper was made a
Mamamouchi, [169] It would have been well if this had been the worst.
But it is not too much to say that of the difference between right and
wrong Avaux had no more notion than a brute. One sentiment was to him
in the place of religion and morality, a superstitious and intolerant
devotion to the Crown which he served. This sentiment pervades all his
despatches, and gives a colour to all his thoughts and words. Nothing
that tended to promote the interest of the French monarchy seemed to him
a crime. Indeed he appears to have taken it for granted that not only
Frenchmen, but all human beings, owed a natural allegiance to the House
of Bourbon, and that whoever hesitated to sacrifice the happiness and
freedom of his own native country to the glory of that House was a
traitor. While he resided at the Hague, he always designated those
Dutchmen who had sold themselves to France as the well intentioned
party. In the letters which he wrote from Ireland, the same feeling
appears still more strongly. He would have been a more sagacious
politician if he had sympathized more with those feelings of moral
approbation and disapprobation which prevail among the vulgar. For his
own indifference to all considerations of justice and mercy was such
that, in his schemes, he made no allowance for the consciences and
sensibilities of his neighbours. More than once he deliberately
recommended wickedness so horrible that wicked men recoiled from it with
indignation. But they could not succeed even in making their scruples
intelligible to him. To every remonstrance he listened with a cynical
sneer, wondering within himself whether those who lectured him were such
fools as they professed to be, or were only shamming.

Such was the man whom Lewis selected to be the companion and monitor of
James. Avaux was charged to open, if possible, a communication with the
malecontents in the English Parliament; and he was authorised to expend,
if necessary, a hundred thousand crowns amon