History of French Literature in the Eighteenth Century

entered on any pretence whatever. How strange is the world! It had treated him with abhorrence in his first condition, and it was tempted to despise the second. The prince felt it, bore it, and attached with joy this species of opprobrium to the cross of his Saviour, that he might feel ashamed at the bitter remembrance of his former pride. He met with what was still more painful ? the dull and heavy looks of his nearest relations. The king, with his external devotion and regularity, soon saw, with secret indignation, a prince of that age censuring, unintentionally, his life by his conduct, refusing to himself a new chest of drawers, with a view to give to the poor the price that was destined for it, and thanking him modestly for a new gilding, with which some wished to renew his little apartment. It was observed how much piqued he was at his too obstinate refusal to be present at a ball at Marly, on the day of the Kings. Truly, it was the fault of a novice. He owed this respect, nay, to speak plainly, this charitable compliance, to the king, his grandfather, not to provoke him by this strange contrast; but, in the main, when we look at it in itself, it was a very great action, which exposed him to all the consequences of the disgust for himself, that he produced in the king, and to the talk of a court of which the king was the idol, and which turned into ridicule such singularity. " Monseigneuri was in his side a thorn not less sharp, quite given up to material objec...