There, at least, I shall have the fashion of my peruke and my
speech at first hand. Here you only adopt a mode when Paris begins to tire
of it.
"Farewell, then, dearest lady, but let it be no tragical or eternal
parting, since your fine house in the Rue de Touraine will doubtless be
honoured with your presence some day. You have only to open a salon there
in order to be the top of the mode. Some really patrician milieu is needed
to replace the antique court of the dear old Marquise, and to extinguish
the Scudery, whose Saturdays grow more vulgar every week. Yes, you will
come to Paris, bringing that human lily, Mrs. Angela, in your train; and I
promise to make you the fashion before your house has been open a month.
The wits and Court favourites will go where I bid them. And though your
dearest friend, Madame de Longueville, has retired from the world in
which she was more queenly than the Queen, you will find Mademoiselle de
Montpensier as faithful as ever to mundane pleasures, and, after having
refused kings and princes, slavishly devoted to a colonel of dragoons who
does not care a straw for her.
"Louise de Bourbon, a woman who can head a revolt and fire a cannon, would
think no sacrifice too great for a cold-hearted schemer like Lauzun--yet
you who swore you loved me, when the coach was waiting that would have
carried me to paradise, and made us one for all this life, could suffer a
foolish girl to separate us in the very moment of triumphant union.
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