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ecclesiastics, in disguise and out; with tale-bearers from St. Germains;
and quidnuncs that knew the last news from Versailles; nay, the exact
force and number of the next expedition which the French king was to
send from Dunkirk, and which was to swallow up the Prince of Orange, his
army and his court. She had received the Duke of Berwick when he landed
here in '96. She kept the glass he drank from, vowing she never would
use it till she drank King James the Third's health in it on his
Majesty's return; she had tokens from the Queen, and relics of the saint
who, if the story was true, had not always been a saint as far as she
and many others were concerned. She believed in the miracles wrought at
his tomb, and had a hundred authentic stories of wondrous cures effected
by the blessed king's rosaries, the medals which he wore, the locks of
his hair, or what not. Esmond remembered a score of marvellous tales
which the credulous old woman told him. There was the Bishop of Autun,
that was healed of a malady he had for forty years, and which left
him after he said mass for the repose of the king's soul. There was M.
Marais, a surgeon in Auvergne, who had a palsy in both his legs, which
was cured through the king's intercession. There was Philip Pitet, of
the Benedictines, who had a suffocating cough, which wellnigh
killed him, but he besought relief of heaven through the merits and
intercession of the blessed king, and he straightway felt a profuse
sweat breaking out all over him, and was recovered perfectly. And
there was the wife of Mons. Lepervier, dancing-master to the Duke
of Saxe-Gotha, who was entirely eased of a rheumatism by the king's
intercession, of which miracle there could be no doubt, for her surgeon
and his apprentice had given their testimony, under oath, that they did
not in any way contribute to the cure. Of these tales, and a thousand
like them, Mr. Esmond believed as much as he chose. His kinswoman's
greater faith had swallow for them all.

The English High Church party did not adopt these legends. But truth and
honor, as they thought, bound them to the exiled king's side; nor
had the banished family any warmer supporter than that kind lady of
Castlewood, in whose house Esmond was brought up. She influenced her
husband, very much more perhaps than my lord knew, who admired his wife
prodigiously though he might be inconstant to her, and who, adverse
to the trouble of thinking himself, gladly enough adop