Simon
paid me a visit. After a little preliminary conversation, he unburdened
the secret with which he was charged. I was desired to leave Paris in
forty-eight hours.

"Believe me," said St. Simon, "that this message was not intrusted to me
by the Regent without great reluctance. He sends you many condescending
and kind messages; says he shall always both esteem and like you,
and hopes to see you again, some time or other, at the Palais Royal.
Moreover, he desires the message to be private, and has intrusted it
to me in especial, because hearing that I had a kindness for you, and
knowing I had a hatred for Dubois, he thought I should be the least
unwelcome messenger of such disagreeable tidings. 'To tell you the
truth, St. Simon,' said the Regent, laughing, 'I only consent to have
him banished, from a firm conviction that if I do not Dubois will take
some opportunity of having him beheaded.'"

"Pray," said I, smiling with a tolerably good grace, "pray give my most
grateful and humble thanks to his Highness, for his very considerate
and kind foresight. I could not have chosen better for myself than his
Highness has chosen for me: my only regret on quitting France is at
leaving a prince so affable as Philip and a courtier so virtuous as St.
Simon."

Though the good Duc went every year to the Abbey de la Trappe for the
purpose of mortifying his sins and preserving his religion in so impious
an atmosphere as the Palais Royal, he was not above flattery; and he
expressed himself towards me with particular kindness after my speech.

At court, one becomes a sort of human ant-bear, and learns to catch
one's prey by one's tongue.

After we had eased ourselves a little by abusing Dubois, the Duc took
his leave in order to allow me time to prepare for my "journey," as he
politely called it. Before he left, he, however, asked me whither my
course would be bent? I told him that I should take my chance with the
Czar Peter, and see if his czarship thought the same esteem was due to
the disgraced courtier as to the favoured diplomatist.

That night I received a letter from St. Simon, enclosing one addressed
with all due form to the Czar. "You will consider the enclosed," wrote
St. Simon, "a fresh proof of the Regent's kindness to you; it is a most
flattering testimonial in your favour, and cannot fail to make the Czar
anxious to secure your services."

I was not a little touched by a kindness so unusual in princes to their
disc