The meeting, indeed, was so peculiar, from the high station of M. de Lauriston; the superb equipage waiting at his door to carry him, for the most popular of purposes, to an appointed audience with a British minister; and the glare, the parade, the cost, the attendants, and the attentions by which he was encompassed; contrasted with the worn, as well as plain habiliments of the recluse of West Hamble, that it gave a singularity to the equality of their manners to each other, and the mutuality of the joy and affection of their embraces, that from first exciting the astonishment, next moved the admiration of the domestics of the Minister Plenipotentiary; and particularly of his frizeur, who, probably, was his first valet-de-chambre; and who, while they were yet in each other’s arms, exclaimed aloud, with that familiarity in which the French indulge their favourite servants, “_Ma foi! voilà qui est beau!_”
This characteristic freedom of approbation broke into the pathos of the interview by causing a hearty laugh; and M. de Lauriston, who then had not another instant to spare, cordially invited his recovered friend to breakfast with him the next morning.
At that breakfast, M. de Lauriston recorded the circumstances that had led to his present situation, with all the trust and openness of their early intercourse. And sacred General d’Arblay held that confidence; which should have sunk into oblivion, but for the after circumstances, and present state of things, which render all that, then, was prudentially secret, now desirably public.
No change, he said, of sentiment, no dereliction of principle, had influenced his entering into the service of the republic. Personal gratitude alone had brought about that event. Whilst fighting, under the banners of Austria, against Buonaparte, in one of the campaigns of Italy, he had been taken prisoner, with an Austrian troop. His companions in arms were immediately conveyed to captivity, there to stand the chances of confinement or exchange; but he, as a Frenchman, had been singled out by the conquerors, and stigmatized as a deserter, by the party into whose hands he had fallen, and who condemned him to be instantly shot: though, as he had never served Buonaparte, no laws of equity could brand as a traitor the man who had but constantly adhered to his first allegiance. Buonaparte himself, either struck by this idea; or with a desire to obtain a distinguished officer of artillery, of which alone his army wanted a supply; felt induced to start forward in person, to stop the execution at the very instant it was going to take place. And, to save M. de Lauriston, at the same time, from the ill-will or vengeance of the soldiers, Buonaparte concealed him, till the troop by which he had been taken was elsewhere occupied; conducting himself, in the meanwhile, with so much consideration and kindness, that the gentle heart of Lauriston was gained over by grateful feelings, and he accepted the post afterwards offered to him of Aide-de-camp to the First Consul; with whom, in a short time, he rose to so much trust and favour, as to become the colleague of Duroc, as a chosen and military,—though not, as Duroc, a confidential secretary.