At Frohsdorff they still clung to their hopes, with that old-world belief
in the ultimate revival of a dead régime which was eminently
characteristic. And at Frohsdorff there died, in the October of this
year, the Duchess of Angoulême, Marie Therese Charlotte, daughter of
Marie Antoinette, who had despised her two uncles, Louis XVIII and
Charles X, for the concessions they had made--who was more Royalist than
the King. She was the last of her generation, the last of her family, and
with her died a part of the greatness of France, almost all the dignity
of royalty, and the last master-mind of the Bourbon race.
If, as Albert de Chantonny stated, the failure of Turner's bank was
nothing but a ruse to gain time, it had the desired effect. For a space,
nothing could be undertaken, and the Marquis de Gemosac and his friends
were hindered from continuing the work they had so successfully begun.
All through the summer Loo Barebone remained in France, at Gemosac as
much as anywhere. The Marquis de Gemosac himself went to Frohsdorff.
"If she had been ten years younger," he said, on his return, "I could
have persuaded her to receive you. She has money. All the influence is
hers. It is she who has had the last word in all our affairs since the
death of the Due de Berri. But she is old--she is broken. I think she is
dying, my friend."
It was the time of the vintage again. Barebone remembered the last
vintage, and his journey through those provinces that supply all the
world with wine, with Dormer Colville for a companion. Since then he had
journeyed alone. He had made a hundred new friends, had been welcomed in
a hundred historic houses. Wherever he had passed, he had left enthusiasm
behind him--and he knew it.
He had grown accustomed to his own power, and yet its renewed evidence
was a surprise to him every day. There was something unreal in it. There
is always something unreal in fame, and great men know in their own
hearts that they are not great. It is only the world that thinks them so.
When they are alone--in a room by themselves--they feel for a moment
their own smallness. But the door opens, and in an instant they arise and
play their part mechanically.
This had come to be Barebone's daily task. It was so easy to make his way
in this world, which threw its doors open to him, greeted him with
outstretched hands, and only asked him to charm them by being himself. He
had not even to make an effort to appear to be that which he was not. He
had only to be himself, and they were satisfied.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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