‘Rupert is too High-Dutch to be much of a courtier,’ said the Prince.

’Rupert is old enough to know what is for your good, and not sacrifice all to a jest,’ returned his mother.

By this time the carriage had reached the Palais Royal.  We were told that Mademoiselle was still at her toilette, and up we all went, through ranks of Swiss and lackeys, to her apartments, to a splendid dressing-room, where the Princess sat in a carnation dress, richly ornamented with black and white, all complete except the fastening the feather in her hair.  The friseur was engaged in this critical operation, and whole ranks of ladies stood round, one of them reading aloud one of Plutarch’s Lives.  The Queen came forward, with the most perfect grace, crying:  ‘Oh, it is ravishing!  What a coincidence!’ and pointing to her son, as if the similarity in colours had been a mere chance instead of a contrivance of hers.

Then, with the most gracious deference in the world, so as not to hurt the hairdresser’s feelings, she showed my head, and begged permission to touch up her niece’s, kissing her as she did so.  Then she signed to the Prince to hold her little hand-mirror, and he obeyed, kneeling on one knee before Mademoiselle; while the Queen, with hands that really were more dexterous than those of any one I ever saw, excepting my mother, dealt with her niece’s hair, paying compliments in her son’s name all the time, and keeping him in check with her eye.  She contrived to work in some of her own jewels, rubies and diamonds, to match the scarlet, black and white.  I have since found the scene mentioned in Mademoiselle’s own memoirs, but she did not see a quarter of the humour of it.  She was serene in the certainty that her aunt was paying court to her, and the assurance that her cousin was doing the same, though she explains that, having hopes of the Emperor, and thinking the Prince a mere landless exile, she only pitied him.  Little did she guess how he laughed at her, his mother, and himself, most of all at her airs, while his mother, scolding him all the time, joined in the laugh, though she always maintained that Mademoiselle, in spite of her overweening conceit and vanity, would become an excellent and faithful wife, and make her husband’s interests her own.

‘Rather too much so,’ said the Prince, shrugging his shoulders; ’we know what the Margaret of Anjou style of wife can do for a King of England.’

However, as he always did what any one teased him about, if it were not too unpleasant, and as he was passionately fond of his mother, and as amused by playing on the vanity of la grande Mademoiselle, he acted his part capitally.  It was all in dumb show, for he really could not speak French at that time, though he could understand what was said to him.  He, like a good many other Englishmen, held that the less they assimilated themselves to their French hosts, the more they showed their hopes of returning home, and it was not till after his expedition to Scotland that he set himself to learn the language.