me: Fleuri has no
_faux-brillant_, no genius, indeed, of very prominent order; but he is
one of those soft and smooth minds which, in a crisis like the present,
when parties are contending and princes wrangling, always slip silently
and unobtrusively into one of the best places. Keep in with Frejus: you
cannot do wrong by it; although you must remember that at present he
is in ill odour with the king, and you need not go with _him twice_ to
Versailles. But, above all, when you are introduced to Louis, do
not forget that you cannot please him better than by appearing
awe-stricken."

Such was Bolingbroke's parting advice. The Bishop of Frejus carried
me with him (on the morning we had appointed) to Versailles. What a
magnificent work of royal imagination is that palace! I know not in any
epic a grander idea than terming the avenues which lead to it the roads
"to Spain, to Holland," etc. In London, they would have been the roads
to Chelsea and Pentonville!

As we were driving slowly along in the Bishop's carriage, I had ample
time for conversation with that personage, who has since, as the
Cardinal de Fleuri, risen to so high a pitch of power. He certainly has
in him very little of the great man; nor do I know anywhere so striking
an instance of this truth,--that in that game of honours which is played
at courts, we obtain success less by our talents than our tempers.
He laughed, with a graceful turn of _badinage_, at the political
peculiarities of Madame de Balzac; and said that it was not for the
uppermost party to feel resentment at the chafings of the under one.
Sliding from this topic, he then questioned me as to the gayeties I had
witnessed. I gave him a description of the party at Boulainvilliers'. He
seemed much interested in this, and showed more shrewdness than I should
have given him credit for in discussing the various characters of the
_literati_ of the day. After some general conversation on works of
fiction, he artfully glided into treating on those of statistics and
politics, and I then caught a sudden but thorough insight into the
depths of his policy. I saw that, while he affected to be indifferent to
the difficulties and puzzles of state, he lost no opportunity of
gaining every particle of information respecting them; and that he made
conversation, in which he was skilled, a vehicle for acquiring that
knowledge which he had not the force of mind to create from his own
intellect, or to work out from the