the service of
France it will be accompanied by a post worthy of your name."

"The service of France!" I repeated; "why, at present that is the
service of an enemy."

"An enemy only to a _part_ of England!" said the Abbe, emphatically;
"perhaps I have overtures to you from other monarchs, and the friendship
of the court of France may be synonymous with the friendship of the true
sovereign of England."

There was no mistaking the purport of this speech, and even in the midst
of my gratified vanity I drew back alarmed.

The Abbe noted the changed expression of my countenance, and artfully
turned the subject to comments on the sword, on which I still gazed with
a lover's ardour. Thence he veered to a description of the grace and
greatness of the royal donor: he dwelt at length upon the flattering
terms in which Louis had spoken of my father, and had inquired
concerning myself; he enumerated all the hopes that the illustrious
house into which my father had first married expressed for a speedy
introduction to his son; he lingered with an eloquence more savouring of
the court than of the cloister on the dazzling circle which surrounded
the French throne; and when my vanity, my curiosity, my love of
pleasure, my ambition, all that are most susceptible in young minds,
were fully aroused, he suddenly ceased, and wished me a good night.

"Stay," said I; and looking at him more attentively than I had hitherto
done, I perceived a change in his external appearance which somewhat
startled and surprised me. Montreuil had always hitherto been remarkably
plain in his dress; but he was now richly attired, and by his side hung
a rapier, which had never adorned it before. Something in his aspect
seemed to suit the alteration in his garb: and whether it was that long
absence had effaced enough of the familiarity of his features to allow
me to be more alive than formerly to the real impression they were
calculated to produce, or whether a commune with kings and nobles had of
late dignified their old expression, as power was said to have clothed
the soldier-mien of Cromwell with a monarch's bearing,--I do not affect
to decide; but I thought that, in his high brow and Roman features,
the compression of his lip, and his calm but haughty air, there was a
nobleness, which I acknowledged for the first time. "Stay, my father,"
said I, surveying him, "and tell me, if there be no irreverence in the
question, whether brocade and a sword are compa