Malletort had several good reasons for thus detaching himself from the Court. The first, and most important, was the state of the Duke’s health. The Abbé had not failed to mark the evil effects produced even by so slight an excitement as the affair at the Hôtel Montmirail. He perceived the Regent’s tendency to apoplexy growing stronger day by day; he observed that the slightest emotion now caused him to flush a dark red even in the morning, and he knew that at supper his fulness of habit was so obvious as to alarm the very _roués_, lest every draught should be his last. If sudden death were to carry off the Regent, Malletort felt all his labour would have been thrown away, and he must begin at the lowest round of the ladder again. His connection with the Jesuits, for he had long ago enlisted himself as a secret member of that powerful Order, was now of service to him. They had influence with the advisers of the young king, they were ardent promoters of the claims to the British crown, laid by that James Stuart, whom history has called the Old Pretender. It was quite possible that under a new state of things they might hold some of the richest rewards in France and England to bestow on their adherents. Above all, the very keystone of their system, the power that set all their machinery in motion, was a spirit of busy and unremitting intrigue. Abbé Malletort never breathed so freely as in an atmosphere of plots and counterplots. With all the energy of his nature, he devoted himself to the interests of the Order, keeping up his connection with the Court, chiefly on its behalf. He was as ready now to betray the Regent to his new allies, as he had been a few months before to sacrifice honour and probity for the acquisition of that prince’s good-will. There are few men, however, who can thoroughly divest themselves of all personal feelings in pursuit of their own interest. Even Malletort possessed the weaknesses of pride, pique, and certain injudicious partialities which he could not quite overcome. He hated his late patron for many reasons of his own, for none more than that his persecution had compelled Madame de Montmirail and her daughter to leave France and seek a refuge beyond the sea. If he cared for anything on earth, besides his own aggrandisement, it was his kinswoman; and when he thought of the Marquise, a smile would overspread his features that denoted anything but Christian charity or good-will to her royal admirer.