However, he still rode out in attendance on the Duke of Gloucester, who always preferred him to any other of the gentlemen who waited on the Queen.  One evening in October he stayed out so late that we had begun to be anxious at his being thus exposed to the air after sunset, when he came up to our salon in high spirits, telling us that he had been returning with the Duke from a ride on the Amiens Road when they saw some altercation going on at the barriers between the guard and a gentleman on horseback, shabby and travel-stained, whom they seemed unwilling to admit.  For the Parisians, who always worship success and trample on misfortune, had, since the disaster at Worcester, shown themselves weary of receiving so many unlucky cavaliers, and were sometimes scantly civil.  The stranger, as he saw the others come up, called out:  ’Ha, Walwyn, is it you?  You’ll give your word for me that the Chevalier Stuart is an honest fellow of your acquaintance, though somewhat out at elbows, like other poor beggars.’

And then Eustace saw that it was the King, sun-burnt, thin, and ill-clad, grown from a lad to a man, but with his black eyes glittering gaily through all, as no one’s ever did glitter save King Charles’s.  He gave his word, and passed him through without divulging who he was, since it would not have been well to have had all the streets turn out to gaze on him in his present trim, having ridden on just as he crossed from Brigthelmstone.  The two brothers did not know one another, not having met since Prince Henry was a mere infant of four or five years old; and Eustace said he found the little fellow drawing himself up, and riding somewhat in advance, in some princely amazement that so shabby a stranger should join his company so familiarly and without any check from his companion.

The King began to ask for his mother, and then, at a sign and hint from Eustace, called out: 

‘What!  Harry, hast not a word for thy poor battered elder brother?’

And the boy’s face, as he turned, was a sight to see, as Eustace told us.

He had left Queen Henrietta embracing her son in tears of joy for his safe return, and very thankful we were, though it did but take out first reception at the Louvre to see that though the King was as good-humoured, gracious, and merry as ever, he was not changed for the better by all he had gone through.  He had left the boy behind him, and now seemed like a much older man, who only laughed and got what amusement he could out of a world where he believed in nothing noble nor good, and looked forward to nothing.

The old ladies said he had grown like his grandfather, Henri IV., and when this was repeated Eustace shook his head, and told Meg that he feared it was in one way true enough, and Meg, who always hoped, bade us remember how many years the Grand Monarque had to dally away before he became the preserver and peace-maker of France.

However, even Meg, who had always let the King be like an old playfellow with her, was obliged to draw back now, and keep him at the most formal distance.  I never had any trouble with him.  I do not think he liked me; indeed I once heard of his saying that I always looked like a wild cat that had got into the salon by mistake, and was always longing to scratch and fly.  He would be quite willing to set me to defend a castle, but for the rest——­