wever important it may be, is rarely prepared by calculation
or directed by will. It is almost always chance which takes a man as the
wind does a leaf, and throws him into some new and unknown path, where,
once entered, he is obliged to obey a superior force, and where, while
believing himself free, he is but the slave of circumstances and the
plaything of events.

It was thus with the chevalier. Interest and gratitude attached him to
the party of the old court. D'Harmental, in consequence, had not
calculated the good or the harm that Madame de Maintenon had done
France. He did not weigh in the balance of genealogy Monsieur de Maine
and Monsieur d'Orleans. He felt that he must devote his life to those
who had raised him from obscurity, and knowing the old king's will,
regarded as a usurpation Monsieur d'Orleans' accession to the regency.

Fully expecting an armed reaction against this power, he looked around
for the standard which he should follow. Nothing that he expected
happened; Spain had not even protested. Monsieur de Maine, fatigued by
his short contest, had retired into the shade. Monsieur de Toulouse,
good, easy, and almost ashamed of the favors which had fallen to the
share of himself and his elder brother, would not permit even the
supposition that he could put himself at the head of a party. The
Marshal de Villeroy had made a feeble and systemless opposition. Villars
went to no one, but waited for some one to come to him. D'Axelles had
changed sides, and had accepted the post of secretary for foreign
affairs. The dukes and peers took patience, and paid court to the
regent, in the hope that he would at last take away from the Dukes of
Maine and Toulouse the precedence which Louis XIV. had given them.

Finally, there was discontent with, and even opposition to, the
government of the Duc d'Orleans, but all impalpable and disjointed. This
is what D'Harmental had seen, and what had resheathed his half-drawn
sword: he thought he was the only one who saw another issue to affairs,
and he gradually came to the conclusion that that issue had no
existence, except in his own imagination, since those who should have
been most interested in that result seemed to regard it as so
impossible, that they did not even attempt to attain to it.

Although the carriage had been on the road nearly half an hour, the
chevalier had not found it long: so deep were his reflections, that,
even if his eyes had not been bandaged, he woul