be glad to see." Then, after entreating his guests to
visit him next day at Versailles, and to let him have the pleasure
of showing them his buildings, pictures, and plantations, he took the
unceremonious leave of an old friend.

In a few hours the royal pair were informed that, as long as they
would do the King of France the favour to accept of his hospitality,
forty-five thousand pounds sterling a year would be paid them from his
treasury. Ten thousand pounds sterling were sent for outfit.

The liberality of Lewis, however, was much less rare and admirable than
the exquisite delicacy with which he laboured to soothe the feelings
of his guests and to lighten the almost intolerable weight of the
obligations which he laid upon them. He who had hitherto, on all
questions of precedence, been sensitive, litigious, insolent, who had
been more than once ready to plunge Europe into war rather than concede
the most frivolous point of etiquette, was now punctilious indeed, but
punctilious for his unfortunate friends against himself. He gave orders
that Mary should receive all the marks of respect that had ever been
paid to his own deceased wife. A question was raised whether the Princes
of the House of Bourbon were entitled to be indulged with chairs in
the presence of the Queen. Such trifles were serious matters at the old
court of France. There were precedents on both sides: but Lewis decided
the point against his own blood. Some ladies of illustrious rank omitted
the ceremony of kissing the hem of Mary's robe. Lewis remarked the
omission, and noticed it in such a voice and with such a look that the
whole peerage was ever after ready to kiss her shoe. When Esther, just
written by Racine, was acted at Saint Cyr, Mary had the seat of honour.
James was at her right hand. Lewis modestly placed himself on the left.
Nay, he was well pleased that, in his own palace, an outcast living on
his bounty should assume the title of King of France, should, as King of
France, quarter the lilies with the English lions, and should, as King
of France, dress in violet on days of court mourning.

The demeanour of the French nobility on public occasions was absolutely
regulated by their sovereign: but it was beyond even his power to
prevent them from thinking freely, and from expressing what
they thought, in private circles, with the keen and delicate wit
characteristic of their nation and of their order. Their opinion of
Mary was favourable. The