This letter made him perfectly contented; he had no reason to question
the continuance of Dorilaus's goodness to him, nor that he should attend
this new proof of it any longer than the return of that gentleman to
England should make him know the occasion he now had for it.
He
therefore had no anxious thoughts to interrupt the pleasures the place
he was in afforded in such variety; he was every evening with the baron,
either at court, the opera, the comedy, or some other gay scene of
entertainment; was introduced to the best company; and his young heart,
charm'd with the politeness and gallantry of that nation, and the little
vanity to which a person of such early years is incident, being
flattered with the complaisance he was treated with, gave him in a short
time a very strong affection for them; but there was yet another and
more powerful motive which rendered his captivity not only pleasing, but
almost destroyed in him an inclination ever to see his native
country again.
The baron de la Valiere had long been passionately in love with a young
lady, who was one of the maids of honour to king James's queen: he went
almost every day to St. Germains, in order to prosecute his addresses,
and frequently took Horatio with him. The motive of his first
introducing him to that court was, perhaps, the vanity of shewing him
that no reverse of fate could make the French regardless of what was due
to royalty, since the Chevalier St. George seem'd to want no requisite
of majesty but the power; but he afterwards found the pleasure he took
in those visits infinitely surpassed what he could have expected, and
that his heart had an attachment, which made him no sooner quit that
palace than he would ask with impatience when they should go thither
again.
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