never dared to approach her with a
disrespectful thought even.

These legitimist gentlemen entertained themselves chiefly with
reflections over the past, and their own grandeur. In the midst of the
many new things by which they were surrounded, some of which they
unfortunately found it impossible to ignore, it was their sweetest
relaxation to give themselves up entirely to the remembrance of the old
_regime_, and when they spoke of this era, they forgot their age and
debility, and were once more the young _roues_ of the _oeil de boeuf_.

Once in the antechamber of King Louis XVIII., while the Marquis de
Chimene and the Duke de Lauraguais, two old heroes of the frivolous era,
in which the boudoir and the _petites maisons_ were the battle-field,
and the myrtle instead of the laurel the reward of victory, while these
gentlemen were conversing of some occurrence under the old government,
the Duke de Lauraguais, in order to more nearly fix the date of the
occurrence of which they were speaking, remarked to the marquis, "It was
in