This we did before he could follow us; and the last I saw of M. de Lamont as I quitted St. Germain, he was still kneeling in the court, in the attitude of an Orlando Furioso, reaching out his arms towards the departing carriage.  I did not pity him, for I did not for a moment believe his passion a serious one, and I thought his wife would not be much happier than my poor little sister-in-law, about whom I was very anxious, and as to these extravagances, they were the ordinary custom of those who professed to be lovers.  He was one of the equerries-in-waiting on the Duchess of Orleans, and thus happily could not follow; and I never rejoiced more than when Gaspard and I, with my two women, had turned our backs on St. Germain and began to descend through the scattered trees of the forest towards Paris.

No less than forty carriages came out to meet the deputies on their return, and our progress was very slow, but at last we found ourselves at our hotel, where we were entirely unexpected, and the porter was so much surprised that, instead of announcing us properly, he rushed into the courtyard, screaming out:  ’Madame!  Monsieur le Marquis!’ The whole household came rushing down the steps pell-mell, so that it was plain at the first glance that my mother was not there.  Annora was the first to throw herself into my arms, with a shriek and sob of joy, which gave me a pleasure I cannot describe when I contrasted this meeting with our former one, for now again I felt that we were wholly sisters.

Gaspard sprang to the Abbe’s neck, and declared himself tired of his holidays, and quite ready to resume his studies.  They would be much pleasanter than running after the King and Duke of Anjou, and bearing the blame of all their pranks.  My mother, I heard, was at the Convent of St. Jaques with her poor bereaved Queen, and she had left my sister in the charge of Sir Francis and Lady Ommaney.

The old lady came to welcome me; Sir Francis was out gone to inquire for the President Darpent; and before I had been an hour in the house, I found how entirely different a world it was from that which I had left, and how changed were the interests that absorbed it.  Of my poor little Cecile scarcely anything was known.  Annora had only seen her once or twice, and even the poor English Queen was second in interest to the illness of M. Darpent, and the fatigues of his wife in nursing him.  It seemed to me as if Lady Ommaney and my sister discussed, as if he had been their near relation, every symptom of him, who, in the eyes of all my recent companions, was nothing better than an old frondeur, a rebel richly deserving to be put to death.

If Lady Ommaney had understood French, I really believe she would have gone to help Madame Darpent, who had now been sitting up for several nights; and though her son was most dutiful, and shared her vigils, taking every imaginable care of his father, he could not relieve her materially.  The old man died the morning after my return home, and Sir Francis, who had been to inquire, reported that the funeral was to take place the next night by Madame’s desire, as she was resolved that it should not be made an occasion for the meeting of inveighing against the Government as the remote cause of his death.