 out. It was
impossible for Monseigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on the
chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring Heavens. Deep would have
been the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by
only three men; he must have died of two.
    Monseigneur had been out at a little supper last night, where the Comedy and
the Grand Opera were charmingly represented. Monseigneur was out at a little
supper most nights, with fascinating company. So polite and so impressible was
Monseigneur, that the Comedy and the Grand Opera had far more influence with him
in the tiresome articles of state affairs and state secrets, than the needs of
all France. A happy circumstance for France, as the like always is for all
countries similarly favoured! - always was for England (by way of example), in
the regretted days of the merry Stuart who sold it.
    Monseigneur had one truly noble idea of general public business, which was,
to let everything go on in its own way; of particular public business,
Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea that it must all go his way - tend to
his own power and pocket. Of his pleasures, general and particular, Monseigneur
had the other truly noble idea, that the world was made for them. The text of
his order (altered from the original by only a pronoun, which is not much) ran:
»The earth and the fulness thereof are mine, saith Monseigneur.«
    Yet, Monseigneur had slowly found that vulgar embarrassments crept into his
affairs, both private and public; and he had, as to both classes of affairs,
allied himself perforce with a Farmer-General. As to finances public, because
Monseigneur could not make anything at all of them, and must consequently let
them out to somebody who could; as to finances private, because Farmer-Generals
were rich, and Monseigneur, after generations of great luxury and expense, was
growing poor. Hence Monseigneur had taken his sister from a convent, while there
was yet time to ward off the impending veil, the cheapest garment she could
wear, and had bestowed her as a prize upon a very rich Farmer-General, poor in
family. Which Farmer-General, carrying an appropriate cane with a golden apple
on the top of it, was now among the company in the outer rooms, much prostrated
before by mankind - always excepting superior mankind of the blood of
Monseigneur, who, his own wife included, looked down upon him with the loftiest
contempt.
    A sumptuous man was the Farmer-General. Thirty horses stood in his
