name the same as his own, this crabbed nobleman with skin as yellow as an
orange, and body like an orange squeezed dry? He surely meant him no
harm, however, for flashes of kindliness had lighted the shrivelled face
as he talked. His look was bent in piercing comment upon Philip, who,
trying hard to solve the mystery, now made a tentative rejoinder to his
strange statement. Rising from his chair and bowing, he said, with
shrewd foreknowledge of the effect of his words:

"I had not before thought my own name of such consequence."

The old man grunted amiably. "My faith, the very name begets a towering
conceit wherever it goes," he answered, and he brought his stick down on
the floor with such vehemence that the emerald and ruby rings rattled on
his shrunken fingers.

"Be seated--cousin," he said with dry compliment, for Philip had remained
standing, as if with the unfeigned respect of a cadet in the august
presence of the head of his house. It was a sudden and bold suggestion,
and it was not lost on the Duke. The aged nobleman was too keen an
observer not to see the designed flattery, but he was in a mood when
flattery was palatable, seeing that many of his own class were arrayed
against him for not having joined the army of the Vendee; and that the
Revolutionists, with whom he had compromised, for the safety of his lands
of d'Avranche and his duchy of Bercy, regarded him with suspicion.
Between the two, the old man--at heart most profoundly a Royalist--bided
his time, in some peril but with no fear. The spirit of this young
Englishman of his own name pleased him; the flattery, patent as it was,
gratified him, for in revolutionary France few treated him with deference
now. Even the Minister of Marine, with whom he was on good terms, called
him "citizen" at times.