I make no secret of the fact that I bear letters for the
Governor General of Canada, and it would not be pleasing to the Governor
of the Province of New York for me to deliver them to someone else."
"It was merely a suggestion. Let us dismiss it."
He did not speak again of the immediate affairs that concerned them so
vitally, but talked of Paris, where he had spent a gay youth. He saw the
response in the glowing eyes of Robert, and exerted himself to please.
Moreover his heart was in his subject. Quebec was a brilliant city for
the New World, but Paris was the center of the whole world, the flower
of all the centuries, the city of light, of greatness and of genius.
The throne of the Bourbons was the most powerful in modern times, and
they were a consecrated family.
Robert followed him eagerly. Both he and de Courcelles saw the Bourbons
as they appeared to be before the fall, and not as the world has seen
them since, in the light of revelation. The picture of Paris and its
splendors, painted by one who loved it, flung over him a powerful spell,
and only the warning words Willet had spoken recalled to him that the
Bourbon throne might not really be made for all time.
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