BOOK IV.
CHAPTER I.
_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 fetes 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 least could
imitate, seemed a poor return for the feudal splendour and impartial
festivity of an Hungarian magnate. While he was brooding over these
reminiscences, it suddenly occurred to him that he had never made a
progress into his western territories. Pen Bronnock Palace was the boast
of Cornwall, though its lord had never paid it a visit.
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