CHAPTER IV


When my father had been extravagant, he used to say gaily in
self-defence that "one owed something to one's ancestors." Certainly, if
it had not been for several of his ancestors, he would not have owed so
much to his contemporaries. But in spite of their agreeable vices, or
because of them, I was brought up in the cult of ancestor worship, as
religiously as if I had been Chinese.

To be a d'Angely was a privilege, in our eyes, which not only supplied
gilding for the gingerbread, but for the most economical substitutes.

"Ne roi je suis,
Ne prince aussi,
Je suis le Sire d'Angely,"

calmly remarked the gentleman of Louis XI.'s time, who became famous for
hanging as many retainers as he liked, and defending his action by
originating the family motto.

Mother also had ancestors who began to take themselves seriously
somewhere about the time of the _Mayflower_, though for all we know they
may have secured their passage in the steerage.

"A Courtenay can do anything," was their rather ambiguous motto, which
suggested that it might have been started in self-defence, if not as a
boast; and it (the name, not the motto) had been thoughtfully