of considerable emolument at court, and a pension from the private purse of Louis, more than fulfilled De Rosier's solicitations, and opened to De l'Avignon's views, that splendid career of ambition and of power whither all his desires tended. This important service did not terminate De Rosier's good offices in favor of his friend the gratitude of De l'Avignon, the modest but unbounded attachment which he displayed for his benefactor, whose age, being three years more' advanced than his own, furnished a plausible excuse for that deference, `(so flatter ing to a young mind,) which he paid to his opinions and counsels, daily strengthened the bond of their unequal intimacy, and stimulated De Rosier's zeal. He was not content with having procured for him the favor of the monarch; he felt anxious to have him the favorite of the whole court; and whoever sought to cultivate the friendship or engage the interest of De Rosier, Rosier, found the nearest road to both by paying court to De l'Avignon. While other men learn hypocrisy in the progress of their intercourse with the world, De l'Avignon seemed to have issued forth a hypocrite from the hand of nature. Men become treacherous, cruel, and revengeful, when the frauds and cruelties practised against themselves have roused them to recriminate, by bursting asunder the ties of social union, and given a licence to passion under the plea of self-defence ;but De l'Avignon was treacherous, cruel, and revengeful, before he knew one incitement to passion beyond the suggestions of his own heart. In some, the dominion of licentious pleasure commences cautiously, and is embittered by remorse: De l'Avignon, at the age of eighteen, knew no law but his wishes, and no restraint but the necessary concealment of his libertine gratifications. Boundless Boundless ambition rendered him covetous and avaricious. The obscurity into which he was thrown by fortune had early taught him to improve those talents of dissimulation which seemed best calculated to aid the projects of his ambition; and nature, as though she anticipated his designs, had furnished him with a cool penetrative judgement, a firm and exhaustless mind, great powers of elocution, and uncommon beauty of person. Such was the cherished serpent which had twined its shining folds round the heart of the unsuspicious De Rosier. When the King's blind munificence had furnished De l'Avignon with the means to indulge freely in the lawless desires of his heart, he did not, like other young men of similar propensities, launch forth into splendid extravagance or open excess. The vices to which he gave unlimited dominion were known only to those ministers of his power and pleasures whose interest interest depended on their secrecy; whilst to the world he appeared the pupil of virtue and the child of benevolence. He knew the hazards which every one must run who enters the lists avowedly as a candidate for eminence; especially in a court where interest and ambition were the grand springs of action in all; and where the favor of the monarch, on which these depended, was greatly biased by the opinions of the parasites who surrounded him, or counteracted by the secret engines of envy and malevolence, which never fail to be exercised against those whom they despair to excel. He was, therefore, as studious to conceal the splendid abilities with which nature had distinguished him, and as cautious of exerting his influence over the King, as another man would have been ambitious of displaying and exercising their advantages; and the few, who, like de Rosier, knew the superiority of his mental capacity, admired him the more more for a moderation so judicious, and a diffidence which seemed the natural and becoming concomitant of his extreme youth. CHAP. II. Sweet, rouze yourself! and the weak wanton Cupid SHAKESPEARE. ABOUT two years after De Rosier's introduction at court, he requested and obtained his father's permission to make a tour through Switzerland and Italy, in order to dissipate the remembrance of a late painful event, as well as to gratify his |