en of blood and spirit, with whom his
exquisite affability seemed at once to put him on a footing of equal age,
and whose devotion to himself, his person, and his purposes he was always
careful to acquire by a lavish generosity and that powerful patronage
which his former friendship with the cardinal and his present influence
over the king allowed him to extend.

Perhaps the most remarkable proof of Gonzague's astuteness, of Gonzague's
suppleness, was afforded by the manner in which he had succeeded in
holding the favor of the great cardinal through all the long years of
Richelieu's triumph, and yet at the same time in retaining so completely
the friendship of the king. When the cardinal died, and many gentlemen
that served the Red Robe found themselves no longer in esteem, Gonzague
passed at once into the circle of the king's most intimate friends.
Gonzague, as the comrade of a ruling potentate, proved himself a master
of all arts that might amuse a melancholic sovereign newly redeemed from
an age-long tutelage, and eager to sate those many long-restrained
pleasures that he was at last free to command. Gonzague's ambition
appeared to be to play the Petronius part, to be the Arbiter of
Elegancies to a newly liberated king and a newly quickened court.

Very wisely Gonzague had never made himself a politician. He had always
allowed himself to appear as one that was gracefully detached, by his
Italianate condition, from pledge to any party issues, and so in his
suave, affable fashion he went his way, liked by all men who knew him
slightly, counted on by the few men who believed they knew him well, and
hugely admired by that vast congregation of starers and gapers who
passionately display their approval of an urbane, almost an austere,
profligacy.

In the long years in which Gonzague had contrived to establish for
himself the enviable reputation of the ideal of high gentlehood, he had
very quietly and cautiously formed, as it were, a kind of court within a
court--a court that was carefully formed for the faithful service of his
interests. He managed, by dexterously conferring obligations of one kind
or another, to bind his adherents to him by ties as strong as the ties of
kinship, by ties stronger than the ties of allegiance to an unsettled
state and a shadowy idea of justice. There was a Gonzague party among the
aristocracy of the hour, and a very strong party it promised to be, and
very ably guided to further his own en