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On the day when Augias, Conte di Rocco, was raised to the Marquisate and made a member of the Government of Victor-Amadeus III., titular King of Sardinia and Duke of Savoy and Piedmont, an express was despatched from Turin by that newly-aggrandised nobleman to the Chevalier de France in his Hôtel Beausite at Le Prieuré, demanding in marriage the hand of the Chevalier's only child and daughter, Yolande of the white hands.
No more than a day later the brass-new Marchese in person came treading on the heels of his amorous cartel (for, indeed, that seems the word for it), and had his formal interview with the solitary parent -- for Yolande was long motherless. This happened in the year 1783, when a certain democratic simplicity was beginning to temper the extravagances of fashion. Monsignore di Rocco, therefore, had that much excuse for his rusty buckles, his cheap wisp of a cravat (in which a costly diamond burned), his hired equipage and single equerry, or _valet d'écurie_, who was literally his stable-boy. Otherwise, as the great man of the neighbourhood and a suitor to boot, he might have been accused of that sorriest form of ostentation, which is for rank to parade its independence of recognised convention.