ABSTRACT
For some time after my return, I absented myself from Lord Montagu’s, and even felt a repugnance to all society beyond the circle of our own cottage. When about a week had elapsed, Edward and Ralph Montagu called one morning together at the cottage, and pressed me and my sister to dine with them that day. They particularly talked in raptures of a young Marquis de Gevres, who had just arrived from France, and was now on a visit at their father’s house. He had been introduced to them as the perfect paragon of the court of the young king (Louis XIV), who had / lately been declared major, had gone through the solemnity of his coronation, and had made his first campaign 179in Flanders. a They swore to us that he was the most elegant young man, with the most graceful carriage, and the easiest and gayest conversation they had ever seen. To this they added, that he had an uncommon nobleness of air, and that the good sense of his observations upon every thing that he had heard or seen, was altogether wonderful: Henrietta joined in their importunity that I would accept the invitation. I was myself not without an inclination to comply. The Marquis de Gevres spoke French only. But we were none of us to seek in that accomplishment. I had always possessed a peculiar facility in learning languages, and had taken care at Oxford to supply myself with an excellent master. In my distempered state of mind, I felt as if I were sick of ‘the old familiar faces’, b and wanted a certain infusion of novelty, to / restore me to a fresh and robust habit of soul.
