According to his invitation, I dined with the brave Duc de Broglie, in the hall of the old Schloss, the walls and roof of which still bore all the frescoes, heraldic devices and ornaments with which Count Josias had decorated it many years before. Bourgneuf declined to be present, and I cannot say that I regretted his absence; but we had M. Monjoy and some officers of the Regiments of Clermont and Bretagne, all pleasant, gay and affable men save the engineer, who was somewhat reserved, even sad in manner. The Duke talked freely of the folly and loss of life occasioned by our unmeaning expeditions to the coast of France, and dilated particularly on the third (a service which the Greys escaped, by receiving the route for Germany), which ended in the unfortunate battle of St. Cas, where General Durie, Sir John Armitage, and one thousand of our finest troops, particularly of the 1st Foot Guards, were slaughtered on the beach, while four hundred were drowned in their disastrous flight. Minden, however, he and those present tacitly ignored; the defeat there was too recent to be a pleasant French souvenir. He spoke frequently and always with praise of my regiment, the _Ecossais Gris_, which he knew well, having often encountered them on service. He knew Colonel Preston too, and laughed at his quaint old buff coat. He had met the corps at Dettingen, and acknowledged that it was from _his_ hand that one of the Greys wrenched away the famous White Standard--the Cornette Blanche--of the Gendarmes du Roi, and he perfectly remembered the retort, recorded in our first volume as having been made by Colonel Preston to Louis Philippe Duc d'Orleans, at the review of the Scots Greys in Hyde Park. "A greater dishonour than the loss of that banner was never suffered by the Household Cavalry of France," continued the Duc de Broglie; "the _Cornette Blanche_ is a royal standard, which was substituted for the ancient _Pennon Royal_, and was never unfurled save when the King in person led the army; those who served immediately under it were the princes, nobles, and maréchals of France, with old field-officers who received orders from his Majesty direct; so, messieurs, you may imagine what I felt on finding myself unhorsed, and seeing it borne through the slaughter in the hands of a Scottish Grey trooper!" Amid all the topics which we discussed over the wine of the defunct Prince of Ysembourg, with the contents of whose cellars, hewn deep in the old castle rock, Monseigneur le Duc and his epauletted and aiguiletted staff made most free, I could glean nothing about Jacqueline, where she resided, how she had married her cousin, the stern Count, or why, or wherefore; nor did I venture to ask--a natural delicacy, with a difficulty of approaching the subject, together with something of pique, restrained me.