He did not care for the Court gaieties.
"I believe he thinks we have all parted company with our wits," she wrote.
"He seldom sees me but to lecture me, in a sidelong way, upon my folly; for
his railing at the company I keep hits me by implication. I believe
these old courtiers of the late King are Puritans at heart; and that if
Archbishop Laud were alive he would be as bitter against the sins of the
town as any of the cushion-thumping Anabaptists that preach to the elect in
back rooms and blind alleys. My father talks and thinks as if he had spent
all his years of exile in the cave of the Seven Sleepers. And yet he fought
shoulder to shoulder with some of the finest gentlemen in France--Conde,
Turenne, Gramont, St. Evremond, Bussy, and the rest of them. But all the
world is young, and full of wit and mirth, since his Majesty came to his
own; and elderly limbs are too stiff to trip in our new dances. I doubt my
father's mind is as old-fashioned, and of as rigid a shape as his Court
suit, at sight of which my best friends can scarce refrain from laughing."
This light mention of a parent whom she reverenced wounded Angela to the
quick; and that wound was deepened a year later, when she was surprised by
a visit from her father, of which no letter had forewarned her.
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