Yes. It took four men, all four ablaze with gorgeous decoration, andthe Chief of them unable to exist with fewer than two gold watches in hispocket, emulative of the noble and chaste fashion set by Monseigneur,to conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur's lips. One lacquey car-ried the chocolate-pot into the sacred presence; a second, milled andfrothed the chocolate with the little instrument he bore for that function;a third, presented the favoured napkin; a fourth ( he of the two gold wat-ches), poured the chocolate out. It was impossible for Monseigneur todispense with one of these attendants on the chocolate and hold his highplace under the admiring Heavens. Deep would have been the blot uponhis escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only threemen; he must have died of two.
Monseigneur had been out at a little supper last night, where theComedy and the Grand Opera were charmingly represented. Monseigneurwas out at a little supper most nights, with fascinating company. So po-lite and so impressible was Monseigneur, that the Comedy and the GrandOpera had far more influence with him in the tiresome articles of state af-fairs and state secrets, than the needs of all France. A happy circum-stance for France, as the like always is for all countries similarly fa-voured ! --Always was for England ( by way of example), in the regret-ted days of the merry Stuart who sold it.
Monseigneur had one truly noble idea of general public business,which was, to let everything go on in its own way; of particular publicbusiness, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea that it must all gohis way--tend to his own power and pocket. Of his pleasures, generaland particular, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea, that theworld was made for them. The text of his order ( altered from the originalby only a pronoun, which is not much) ran:" The earth and the fulnessthereof are mine, saith Monseigneur. "
Yet, Monseigneur had slowly found that vulgar embarrassments creptinto his affairs, both private and public; and he had, as to both classesof affairs, allied himself perforce with a Farmer-General. As to financespublic, because Monseigneur could not make anything at all of them,and must consequently let them out to somebody who could; as to fi-nances private, because Farmer-Generals were rich, and Monseigneur,after generations of great luxury and expense, was growing poor. HenceMonseigneur had taken his sister from a convent, while there was yettime to ward off the impending veil, the cheapest garment she couldwear, and had bestowed her as a prize upon a very rich Farmer-General,poor in family. Which Farmer-General, carrying an appropriate canewith a golden apple on the top of it, was now among the company in theouter rooms, much prostrated before by mankind--always excepting su-perior mankind of the blood of Monseigneur, who, his own wife includ-ed, looked down upon him with the loftiest contempt.
A sumptuous man was the Farmer-General. Thirty horses stood in hisstables, twenty-four male domestics sat in his halls, six body-womenwaited on his wife. As one who pretended to do nothing but plunder andforage where he could, the Farmer-General--howsoever his matrimonialrelations conduced to social morality--was at least the greatest reality a-mong the personages who attended at the hotel of Monseigneur that day.
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