hdrawing-room, and seeing me
on a footstool, playing it is true at the Battle of Hochstedt with some
leaden soldiers, and two wooden puppets for the Duke and Prince Eugene,
but still all agape at the strange words that had hit my sense, he
catches me a buffet on the ear, bidding me mind my play, and not listen,
else I should hear no good of myself, or of what an osier wand might
haply do to me. And that a change was coming was manifest even in this
rude speech; for my Grandmother, albeit of the wise King's mind on the
proper ordering of children, and showing that she did not hate me when I
needed chastening, would never suffer her Domestics, even to the
highest, to lay a finger upon me.

It was after these things, and while I was crying out, more in anger
than with the smart of the blow, that she called me into her closet and
soothed me, giving me to eat of that much-prized sweetmeat she said was
once such a favourite solace with Queen Mary of Modena, consort of the
late King James, and which she only produced on rare occasions. And then
she bewailed my hurt, but bade me not vex her Director, who was a man of
much holiness, full, when we were contrite, of healing and quieting
words; but then, of a sudden, nipping me pretty sharply by the arm, she
said:

"Child, I charge thee that thou abandon that fair false race, and trust
no man whose name is Stuart, and abide not by their fatal creed." In
remembrance of which, although I am by descent a Cavalier, and bound by
many bonds to the old Noble House,--and surely there was never a Prince
that carried about him more of the far-bearing blaze of Majesty than the
Chevalier de St. G----, and bears it still, all broken as he is, in his
Italian retreat,--I have ever upheld the illustrious House of Brunswick
and the Protestant Succession as by Law Established. And as the barking
of a dog do I contemn those scurril flouts and obloquies which have of
old times tossed me upon tongues, and said of me that I should play fast
and loose with Jacobites and Hanoverians, drinking the King over the
Water on my knees at night, and going down to the Cock-pit to pour news
of Jacobites and recusants and other suspected persons into the ears of
Mr. Secretary in the morning. Treason is Death by the Law, and legal
testimony is not to be gainsaid; but I abhor those Iscariot-minded
wretches, with faces like those who Torture the Saints in old Hangings,
who cry, aha! against the sanctuaries, and trot a