, with
his wonted old high-crowned hat stuck full of images, rendered the contrast yet
more striking; and as the Duke, richly attired with the coronet and mantle of
state, threw himself from his noble charger, and, kneeling on one knee, offered
to hold the stirrup while Louis dismounted from his little ambling palfrey, the
effect was almost grotesque.
    The greeting between the two potentates was, of course, as full of affected
kindness and compliment as it was totally devoid of sincerity. But the temper of
the Duke rendered it much more difficult for him to preserve the necessary
appearances in voice, speech, and demeanour; while in the King, every species of
simulation and dissimulation seemed so much a part of his nature, that those
best acquainted with him could not have distinguished what was feigned from what
was real.
    Perhaps the most accurate illustration, were it not unworthy two such high
potentates, would be, to suppose the King in the situation of a stranger,
perfectly acquainted with the habits and dispositions of the canine race, who,
for some purpose of his own, is desirous to make friends with a large and surly
mastiff, that holds him in suspicion, and is disposed to worry him on the first
symptoms either of diffidence or of umbrage. The mastiff growls internally,
erects his bristles, shows his teeth, yet is ashamed to fly upon the intruder,
who seems at the same time so kind and so confiding, and therefore the animal
endures advances which are far from pacifying him, watching, at the same time,
the slightest opportunity which may justify him in his own eyes for seizing his
friend by the throat.
    The King was no doubt sensible, from the altered voice, constrained manner,
and abrupt gestures of the Duke, that the game he had to play was delicate, and
perhaps he more than once repented having ever taken it in hand. But repentance
was too late, and all that remained for him was that inimitable dexterity of
management, which the King understood equally at least with any man that ever
lived.
    The demeanour which Louis used towards the Duke was such as to resemble the
kind overflowing of the heart in a moment of sincere reconciliation with an
honoured and tried friend, from whom he had been estranged by temporary
circumstances now passed away, and forgotten as soon as removed. The King blamed
himself for not having sooner taken the decisive step of convincing his kind and
good kinsman by such a mark of confidence as he was now bestowing, that the
angry passages which had occurred betwixt them were nothing in his remembrance,
when weighed against the kindness