Book iv.
Chapter 1. Pen Bronnock Palace
THE arrival of the two distinguished foreigners reanimated the dying season. All vied in testifying their consideration, and the Duke of St. James exceeded all. He took them to see the alterations at Hauteville House, which no one had yet witnessed; and he asked their opinion of his furniture, which no one had yet decided on. Two fêtes in the same week established, as well as maintained, his character as the Archduke of fashion. Remembering, however, the agreeable month which he had spent in the kingdom of John the Twenty-fourth, he was reminded, with annoyance, that his confusion at Hauteville prevented him from receiving his friends en grand seigneur in his hereditary castle. Metropolitan magnificence, which, if the parvenu could not equal, he at
