Besides herself, I found in the saloon where she was sitting her only child, a fine lively girl of little more than six years old, who afterwards became my frequent playfellow. Having introduced me to his lady, and told her several particulars of my history, adding no small commendations thereunto on my own behaviour, the Duke summoned his major-domo, to whose hands he consigned me, bidding him make me familiar with the house, and all that it contained. The old man, who had been in the family of De Villardin from infancy, took me by the hand kindly enough, and led me away to his own apartment, which consisted of two small, neat chambers, on the lower story, looking out into the court. Excellent old Jerome Laborde, for such was the name of the major-domo, took care, as we went along, to give me many a consolatory assurance of my being well taken care of, and rendered very happy, in the mansion of his master, conceiving me to be one of those young and inexperienced boys who are generally preferred to the place of page in a nobleman's house at a tender age, and who, commencing with timidity and innocence, generally end in impudence and intrigue. His compassion was also moved towards me from the misfortune, as he thought it, of my being an Englishman. But by this time I had learned to speak French almost as fluently as my native tongue; and, before I had been half an hour with the old major-domo, I had convinced him thoroughly that I was a person to make myself very much at home anywhere, and in any circumstances. His ideas of a page, however, did not permit him to imagine that, as I had not the bashful fears of the earlier stages of pagehood, I could have anything better in my character than the pert sauciness of its latter epoch; and, having conceived this bad opinion of me, the good old man very soon civilly told me, that he would lead me to the pages' room, where I would find three others, as gay and bold as myself. But before I proceed to this new theatre on which my young abilities were destined to display themselves, let me add that, ere many days had passed, I found means to convince worthy Jerome Laborde that the circumstances of my former life had rendered me a very different creature from any he had yet met with in all his long experience of pages. The injustice that he found he had done me, added to the favourable impression he afterwards received, gained me a place in his good will, which I did not lose till his death.