e of
Ormond to me, to ask me to deliver up the seals and papers. I put the
latter very carefully in a little letter-case, and behold an end to the
administration of Lord Bolingbroke! The Jacobites abuse me terribly;
their king accuses me of neglect, incapacity, and treachery; and Fortune
pulls down the fabric she has built for me, in order to pelt me with the
stones!"*

* Letter to Sir W. Windham.--ED.

"My dear, dear friend, I am indeed grieved for you; but I am more
incensed at the infatuation of the Chevalier. Surely, surely he must
already have seen his error, and solicited your return?"

"Return!" cried Bolingbroke, and his eyes flashed fire,--"return!--Hear
what I said to the Queen-Mother who came to attempt a reconciliation:
'Madam,' said I, in a tone as calm as I could command, 'if ever this
hand draws the sword, or employs the pen, in behalf of that prince,
may it rot!' Return! not if my head were the price of refusal! Yet,
Devereux,"--and here Bolingbroke's voice and manner changed,--"yet it is
not at these tricks of fate that a wise man will repine. We do right to
cultivate honours; they are sources of gratification to ourselves: they
are more; they are incentives to the conduct which works benefits
to others; but we do wrong to afflict ourselves at their loss. 'Nec
quaerere nec spernere honores oportet.'* It is good to enjoy the
blessings of fortune: it is better to submit without a pang to their
loss. You remember, when you left me, I was preparing myself for this
stroke: believe me, I am now prepared."

* "It becomes us neither to court nor to despise honours."

And in truth Bolingbroke bore the ingratitude of the Chevalier well.
Soon afterwards he carried his long cherished wishes for retirement
into effect; and Fate, who delights in reversing her disk, leaving
in darkness what she had just illumined, and illumining what she had
hitherto left in obscurity and gloom, for a long interval separated us
from each other, no less by his seclusion than by the publicity to which
she condemned myself.

Lord Bolingbroke's dismissal was not the only event affecting me that
had occurred during my absence from France. Among the most active
partisans of the Chevalier, in the expedition of Lord Mar, had been
Montreuil. So great, indeed, had been either his services or the idea
entertained of their value, that a reward of extraordinary amount was
offered for his head. Hitherto he had escaped, and was suppos