obably in order to account for his absence
from Court; and, although backed by the influence of the Earl of
Melfort, brother of the Duke of Perth, and by the Marquis De Torcy, he
found that he could never recover the confidence of the Queen Mother.

He took the usual plan adopted by servants who perceive that they are on
the eve of being discarded--he announced his determination to retire.
"My Lord," he wrote to Lord Middleton, "I am daily informed, that the
Queen has but a scurvy opinion of me, and that I did her Majesty bad
rather than good service by my journey. My Lord, I find that my enemies
have greater power with the Queen than I can have; and to please them,
and ease her Majesty, I am resolved to meddle no more with any affairs
till the King is of age."[183]

There seemed to have been little need of this voluntary surrender of his
employments; for, after undergoing an examination, in writing from the
Pope's Nuncio, and after several letters had passed between Lord
Middleton and himself, the altercation was peremptorily closed by a
_lettre de cachet_, and Lord Lovat was committed, according to some
statements, to the Bastille,--as others relate, to the Castle of
Angouleme.[184] Upon this occasion the hardihood of Lord Lovat's
character, which shone out so conspicuously at his death, was thus
exemplified.

"As they went along the Captain (by this name he was generally called
among his friends) discoursed the officer with the same freedom as if he
had been carrying him to some merry-meeting; and, on observing on his
men's coats a badge all full of points, with this device--_monstrorum
terror_,--'the terror of monsters,' he said wittily, pointing to the
men, 'Behold there the terror, and here the monster!' meaning himself.
'And if either of the Kings had a hundred thousand of such, they would
be fitter to fright their enemies than to hurt any one of them.' He took
occasion, also, to let his attendants know of what a great and noble
family he was, and how much blood had been spent in the cause of the
Monarchs by his ancestors."[185]

According to Lord Lovat's manifesto, he was at dinner at Bourges,
whither he had been sent on some pretext by the French Government, when
"a grand fat prevot, accompanied by his lieutenant and twenty-four
archers, stole into the drawing-room, and seized Lord Lovat as if he
had been an assassin, demanding from him his sword in the King's name.
The villain of a prevot," adds his Lordsh