be required to leave France. You are too honourable a man, you
are too much my friend, to say any such thing." "It is true,"
answered Portland, "that I did not insist on a positive promise
from you; but remember what passed. I proposed that King James
should retire to Rome or Modena. Then you suggested Avignon; and I
assented. Certainly my regard for you makes me very unwilling to
do anything that would give you pain. But my master's interests
are dearer to me than all the friends that I have in the world
put together. I must tell His Most Christian Majesty all that
passed between us; and I hope that, when I tell him, you will be
present, and that you will be able to bear witness that I have
not put a single word of mine into your mouth."

When Boufflers had argued and expostulated in vain, Villeroy was
sent on the same errand, but had no better success. A few days
later Portland had a long private audience of Lewis. Lewis
declared that he was determined to keep his word, to preserve the
peace of Europe, to abstain from everything which could give just
cause of offence to England, but that, as a man of honour, as a
man of humanity, he could not refuse shelter to an unfortunate
King, his own first cousin. Portland replied that nobody
questioned His Majesty's good faith; but that while Saint
Germains was occupied by its present inmates it would be beyond
even His Majesty's power to prevent eternal plotting between them
and the malecontents on the other side of the Straits of Dover,
and that, while such plotting went on, the peace must necessarily
be insecure. The question was really not one of humanity. It was
not asked, it was not wished, that James should be left
destitute. Nay, the English government was willing to allow him
an income larger than that which he derived from the munificence