"I wonder if you don't occasionally faint under such a weight of honor--and bother," observed Mr. Philip Ingram, not to Monsieur Bontems. "Well, now we have got His Most Christian Majesty in bed, let him stay there. Monsieur Bontems, I am unspeakably indebted to you for your highly-interesting account, and shall never forget it as long as I live. I beg you will not allow me to detain you further from the company, who are earnestly desirous of your enchanting conversation, though less sensible of your merits than I am." Monsieur Bontems laid both hands upon his heart, and made three bows. "Sir, I beg you will not depreciate your high qualities. Sir, I take the utmost delight in conversing with you." And the head-valet of the chamber allowed himself to be absorbed among the general throng. "Well, is he not a comical specimen?" said Philip to Celia. "He often makes me laugh till I am exhausted; and the beauty of it is that he never finds out at what one is laughing. And to think who it is that they worship with all these rites--an old man of seventy-four, with one foot in the grave, who has never been any better than he should be. Really, it reminds one of Herod Agrippa and them of Tyre and Sidon!"[12] "'Thou shalt honor the face of the old man,'"[13] whispered Celia, softly. "My dear," said Philip, "I don't complain of their honoring him. Let them honor him as much as they like--he is their King, and they ought to do. But what we have just heard is not honoring him, to my thinking--it is teasing and worshipping him. I assure you I pity the poor fellow with all my heart. He must have a most uncomfortable time of it. No, if I were to envy any man, it would not be Louis XIV." "Who would it be, Philip?" asked Celia, with a smile. "Simeon Stylites, perhaps," said Philip, drily. "I would quite as soon be the one as the other!" "I don't know who he was," replied Celia. "A gentleman of the olden time, who worked out his salvation for forty years on the top of a tall pillar," was the answer, accompanied by an expression of countenance which Celia had seen before in Philip, and could not understand. "Are you tired?" he added, suddenly. "Scarcely, yet," she answered; "it is all so new to me. But what time is it, Philip?" Philip pulled out a watch about three inches in diameter. "Ten minutes to one." "Do you mean to say it is one o'clock in the morning?" asked Celia, in a voice of unmitigated amazement and horror. "It certainly is not one o'clock in the afternoon," replied Philip, with much gravity. "I had no idea how late it was! Let me go, Philip, please do." And Celia made her escape rather hastily. But Lady Ingram was not justified in saying that nobody would miss her, as she would have seen if she had noticed the lost and _ennuyé_ look of Mr. Philip Ingram after the disappearance of Celia.