sailles to greet and escort him. Meanwhile Lewis, attended by his family and his nobility, went forth in state to receive the exiled Queen. Before his gorgeous coach went the Swiss halberdiers. On each side of it and behind it rode the body guards with cymbals clashing and trumpets pealing. After the King, in a hundred carriages each drawn by six horses, came the most splendid aristocracy of Europe, all feathers, ribands, jewels, and embroidery. Before the procession had gone far it was announced that Mary was approaching. Lewis alighted and advanced on foot to meet her. She broke forth into passionate expressions of gratitude. "Madam," said her host, "it is but a melancholy service that I am rendering you to day. I hope that I may be able hereafter to render you services greater and more pleasing." He embraced the little Prince of Wales, and made the Queen seat herself in the royal state coach on the right hand. The cavalcade then turned towards Saint Germains. At Saint Germains, on the verge of a forest swarming with beasts of chase, and on the brow of a hill which looks down on the windings of the Seine, Francis the First had built a castle, and Henry the Fourth had constructed a noble terrace. Of the residences of the French kings none stood in a more salubrious air or commanded a fairer prospect. The huge size and venerable age of the trees, the beauty of the gardens, the abundance of the springs, were widely famed. Lewis the Fourteenth had been born there, had, when a young man, held his court there, had added several stately pavilions to the mansion of Francis, and had completed the terrace of Henry. Soon, however, the magnificent King conceived an inexplicable disgust for his birthplace. He quitted Saint Germains for Ver sailles, and expended sums almost fabulous in the vain attempt to create a paradise on a spot singularly sterile and unwholesome, all sand or mud, without wood, without water, and without game. Saint Germains had now been selected to be the abode of the royal family of England. Sumptuous furniture had been hastily sent in. The nursery of the Prince of Wales had been carefully furnished with everything that an infant could require. One of the attendants presented to the Queen the key of a superb casket which stood in her apartment. She opened the casket, and found in it six thousand pistoles. On the following day James arrived at Saint Germains. Lewis was already there to welcome Arrival of James at him. The unfortunate exile bowed so low the knees of his protector. Lewis raised him, and embraced him with brotherly tenderness. The two Kings then entered the Queen's room. "Here is a gentleman,” said Lewis to Mary, "whom you will be glad to see." Then, after entreating his guests to visit him next day at Versailles, and to let him have the pleasure of showing them his buildings, pictures, and plantations, he took the unceremonious leave of an old friend. In a few hours the royal pair were informed that, as long as they would do the King of France the favour to accept of his hospitality, forty-five thousand pounds sterling a year would be paid them from his treasury. Ten thousand pounds sterling were sent for outfit. The liberality of Lewis, however, was much less rare and admirable than the exquisite delicacy with which he laboured to soothe the feelings of his guests and to lighten the almost intolerable weight of the obligations which he laid upon them. He who had hitherto, on all questions of precedence, been sensitive, litigious, insolent, who had been more than once ready to plunge Europe into war rather than concede the most frivolous point of etiquette, was now punctilious indeed, but punctilious for his unfortunate friends against himself. He gave orders that Mary should receive all the marks of respect that had ever been paid to his own deceased wife. A question was raised whether the Princes of the House of Bourbon were entitled to be indulged with chairs in the presence of the Queen. Such trifles were serious matters at the old court of France. There were precedents on both sides: but Lewis decided the point against his own blood. Some ladies of illustrious rank omitted the ceremony of kissing the hem of Mary's robe. Lewis remarked the omission, and noticed it in such a voice and with such a look that the whole peerage was ever after ready to kiss her shoe. When Esther, just written by Racine, was acted at Saint Cyr, Mary had the seat of honour. James was at her right hand. Lewis modestly placed himself on the left. Nay, he was well pleased that, in his own palace, an outcast living on his bounty should assume the title of King of France, should, as King of France, quarter the lilies with the English lions, and should, as King of France, dress in violet on days of court mourning. The demeanour of the French nobility on public occasions was absolutely regulated by their sovereign: but it was beyond even his power to prevent them from thinking freely, and from expressing what they thought, in private circles, with the keen and delicate wit characteristic of their nation and of their order. Their opinion of Mary was favourable. They found her person agreeable and her deportment dignified. They respected her courage and her maternal affection; and they pitied her ill fortune. But James they regarded with extreme contempt. They were disgusted by his insensibility, by the cool way in which he talked to every body of his ruin, and by the childish pleasure which he took in the pomp and luxury of Versailles. This strange apathy they attributed, not to philosophy or religion, but to stupidity and meanness of spirit, and remarked that nobody who had had the honour to hear His Britannic Majesty tell his own. story could wonder that he was at Saint Germains and his son in law at Saint James's.1 In the United Provinces the excitement produced by the tidings from England was even greater than in France. This was the moment at which the Batavian federation reached the state of feeling in the United Prov inces. Never had there Never had the en highest point of power and glory. From the day on which the expedition sailed, the anxiety of the whole Dutch nation had been intense. been such crowds in the churches. thusiasm of the preachers been so ardent. The inhabitants of the Hague could not be restrained from insulting Albeville. His house was so closely beset by the populace, day and night, that scarcely any person ventured to visit him; and he was afraid that his chapel would be burned to the ground.2 As mail after mail arrived with news of the Prince's progress, the spirits of his countrymen rose higher and higher; and when at length it was known that he had, on the invitation 1 My account of the reception of James and his wife in France is taken chiefly from the letters of Madame de Sévigné and the Memoirs of Dangeau. 2 Albeville to Preston, 1688, in the Mackintosh Collection. Nov. 23. of the Lords and of an assembly of eminent commoners, taken on himself the executive administration, a general cry of pride and joy rose from all the Dutch factions. An extraordinary mission was, with great speed, despatched to congratulate him. Dykvelt, whose adroitness and intimate knowledge of English politics made his assistance, at such a conjuncture, peculiarly valuable, was one of the Ambassadors; and with him. was joined Nicholas Witsen, a Burgomaster of Amsterdam, who seems to have been selected for the purpose of proving to all Europe that the long feud between the House of Orange and the chief city of Holland was at an end. On the eighth of January Dykvelt and Witsen made their appearance at Westminster. William talked to them with a frankness and an effusion of heart which seldom appeared in his conversations with Englishmen. His first words were, "Well, and what do our friends at home say now?" In truth, the only applause by which his stoical nature seems to have been strongly moved was the applause of his dear native country. Of his immense popularity in England he spoke with cold disdain, and predicted, too truly, the reaction which followed. "Here," said he, "the cry is all Hosannah today, and will, perhaps, be Crucify tomorrow."1 On the following day the first members of the Convention were chosen. The City of London led the 1 "'T is hier nu Hosanna: maar 't zal, veelligt, haast Kruist hem, kruist hem, zyn." Witsen, MS. in Wagenaar, book lxi. It is an odd coincidence that, a very few years before, Richard Duke, a Tory poet, once well known, but now scarcely remembered, except by Johnson's biographical sketch, had used exactly the same illustration about James: "Was not of old the Jewish rabble's cry, Despatch of the Dutch Ambassadors Extraordinary, Jan. 8. 1689; Van Citters, same date. 18 |