e Catholic enough to make him almoner, or Protestant enough to make him
chaplain. So that between two religions, Barkilphedro found himself with
his soul on the ground.

Not a bad posture, either, for certain reptile souls.

Certain ways are impracticable, except by crawling flat on the belly.

An obscure but fattening servitude had long made up Barkilphedro's whole
existence. Service is something; but he wanted power besides. He was,
perhaps, about to reach it when James II. fell. He had to begin all over
again. Nothing to do under William III., a sullen prince, and exercising
in his mode of reigning a prudery which he believed to be probity.
Barkilphedro, when his protector, James II., was dethroned, did not
lapse all at once into rags. There is a something which survives deposed
princes, and which feeds and sustains their parasites. The remains of
the exhaustible sap causes leaves to live on for two or three days on
the branches of the uprooted tree; then, all at once, the leaf yellows
and dries up: and thus it is with the courtier.

Thanks to that embalming which is called legitimacy, the prince himself,
although fallen and cast away, lasts and keeps preserved; it is not so
with the courtier, much more dead than the king. The king, beyond there,
is a mummy; the courtier, here, is a phantom. To be the shadow of a
shadow is leanness indeed. Hence Barkilphedro became famished. Then he
took up the character of a man of letters.

But he was thrust back even from the kitchens. Sometimes he knew not
where to sleep. "Who will give me shelter?" he would ask. He struggled
on. All that is interesting in patience in distress he possessed. He
had, besides, the talent of the termite--knowing how to bore a hole from
the bottom to the top. By dint of making use of the name of James II.,
of old memories, of fables of fidelity, of touching stories, he pierced
as far as the Duchess Josiana's heart.

Josiana took a liking to this man of poverty and wit, an interesting
combination. She presented him to Lord Dirry-Moir, gave him a shelter in
the servants' hall among her domestics, retained him in her household,
was kind to him, and sometimes even spoke to him. Barkilphedro felt
neither hunger nor cold again. Josiana addressed him in the second
person; it was the fashion for great ladies to do so to men of letters,
who allowed it. The Marquise de Mailly received Roy, whom she had never
seen before, in bed, and said to him, "C'est toi