“‘Such was the history of my fellow salver-bearer. After a youth spent in burning vows, in oaths and protestations of what would be his achievements, should he ever be freed from that sombre habit and that slavish tonsure—with a heart beating high with courage, a soul burning for honour and distinction, no sooner had he obtained the freedom for which he had so long sighed, than he hastened to bury all hope, ambition, and liberty beneath the cowl and lowly gabardine of the Trappist. It is evident that his boiling imagination and ardent fancy had been struck with the charms and matchless grace of Marie Antoinette as soon as he had beheld her; he had nursed this passion through years of sorrow and despair, and, when all was over, had sought this solitude but to dwell undisturbed with the memory of her whom he had loved so long, and with devotion so true and yet so hopeless. “‘What a pity,’ said the prince, with a malicious smile, as he concluded his story, ‘that your favourite, Alexandre Dumas, or Eugène Sue, should not have been apprised of the existence of my poor comrade! What a fine five-act melodrama or eight-volumed romance would have been drawn from such materials, could either of them but have procured an hour’s interview with him, even through the famous hole in the garden-wall at Meilleraye, by which I am told much knowledge of the interior arrangements of the Trappists gets abroad into the world.’ “M. de Talleyrand never will lose an opportunity of giving a playful _coup de patte_ to the _romantiques_, whom, like all the followers of the school of Voltaire, he holds in most especial aversion; and many are the amicable battles which he and I are in the habit of fighting together upon this subject.” “Do you ever meet any of the prince’s fellow-students of Saint Sulpice at the Hôtel Talleyrand?” “There is but one who frequents it,” replied C.; “for in general it is they who rather shun the recollections which the _ci-devant_ Abbé de Perigord must bear with him. _His_ intercourse with them has ever been frank and free. As he never played the part of a hypocrite with them, so has he never had to fear detection, or to dread an encounter with those who could tell of his early life.