“You are welcome, monsieur, you are welcome,” said he, rising and pacing to and fro with short, quick steps, while Malletort performed a series of courtly and elaborate bows. “I am about wearied of figures, and I have been saying to myself, with every passing step for the last half-hour, ‘Ah! here comes my little Abbé, who confines himself exclusively to facts—my material and deep-thinking churchman, the best judge in Christendom of wine, pictures, carriages, cutlets, ankles, eyelashes, probabilities, dress, devilry, and deeds of darkness. Here are calculations of Las, to show us all how we need only be able to write our names, and so acquire boundless wealth; but the miserable Scotchman knows no more than the dead how to spend his millions. Would you believe it, my dear fellow, Vaudeville dined with him last night, and they served olives with the stewed ortolans? Olives, I tell you, with ortolans! The man must be a hog!” And the Regent wrinkled up his forehead while he spoke in a favourite grimace, that he flattered himself resembled the portraits of Henri Quatre. He bore, indeed, a kind of spurious resemblance to that great king and gallant soldier, but the resemblance of the brach to the deer-hound, the palfrey to the war-horse, the hawk to the eagle. He made the most of it, however, such as it was; brushed his dark hair into a cluster on the top of his head, contracted the point of his nose, elongated his chin, and elevated his eyebrows, till he almost fancied himself the first Bourbon who sat on the throne of France. Nay, he even went so far as to wear his stockings and the knees of his breeches extremely tight, while the latter were gathered and puckered loosely about the waist, to approach as nearly as possible the costume in which the hero was usually portrayed. In all the worst points of his paragon’s character he copied him to the life, only exaggerating to habitual vice the love of pleasure that was Henry’s principal weakness. As the Duke’s face was broad, high-coloured, good-humoured, nay, notwithstanding the marks it bore of his excesses, tolerably well-favoured, while his figure, though scarcely tall enough for dignity, was robust and in fair proportion, the imitation seemed, perhaps, not entirely unfaithful to its original. Both possessed in a high degree the charm of an exquisite manner; but while the King of Navarre combined with a monarch’s condescension the frank and simple bearing of a soldier, the Duke of Orleans was especially distinguished for the suavity and external ease that mark the address of an accomplished gentleman. This prince possessed, no doubt, the germ of many good qualities, but how could the most promising seed bear fruit when it was choked up and overgrown by such rank weeds as gluttony, drunkenness, and sensuality? vices which seem to sap the energy of the mind as surely, if not so rapidly, as they destroy the vigour of the body.