considered one of the most legitimate excuses for
anything he liked to do, as he would have cut his hand off. These
were the poor French emigrants in England, and the unfortunate
adherents of the House of Stuart in France.
As is now well known, though it was only suspected at the time,
thousands of these men were daily coming and going between France and
Britain, in the very midst of the war; and they were always sure to
find at the house of Plessis kind and civil treatment, perfect
security, and the most accurate intelligence which could be procured
of all that was taking place.
In cases of danger he had a thousand ways of secreting them or
favouring their escape. If ever, as was frequently the case, they
wished to communicate with some kind friend, who was willing to
relieve them, or to frighten some timid enemy upon whom they had some
hold, Plessis could generally find them the means; and in cases where
some one in danger required to be brought off speedily and secretly,
Plessis had often been known to spend very large sums, and risk even
life itself, rather than suffer an enterprise to fail in which he had
taken a part.
The Duke of Shrewsbury and Trumbull, while they were secretaries of
state, employed Plessis actively, and overlooked not a few little
peccadilloes for the sake of the intelligence they obtained; and
Torcy, though he had been known to vow more than once that he would
hang him if he set his foot in France, held two or three long
conferences with him at Versailles, and dismissed him with a present
of several thousand livres.
His apparel was very peculiar, as he generally wore above his
ordinary dress a large long waisted red coat, hooked round his neck
at the collar, somewhat in the manner of a cloak, without his arms
being thrust into the sleeves; his shoes were very high in the
instep, and buckled with a small buckle over the front; but as he was
a little man, and of a somewhat aspiring disposition, the heels of
those shoes were enormously high, sufficient to raise him nearly two
inches from the ground, and make his foot in external appearance very
like that of a calf or a Chinese lady. Indeed, in body and in mind
likewise, he was upon tiptoes the whole day long.
His entrance into the room where the lady was, roused her at once
from the reverie into which she had fallen; and taking up the letter
from the ground, she turned to see who it was that came in.
"Madam," he said, speaking in French, which, be it remarked, was the
language