Étienne d’Arcachon raised his glass, and silenced the little crowd around the gazebo. "To toast the death of the Prince of Orange * would be uncouth, even though he was a perfidious and heretickal usurper and an enemy of France," he said. This oration, being ambiguous, only threw the guests—who were all standing on tiptoe with glasses poised—into utter confusion. They froze long enough for Étienne to dig himself out of his own rhetorical hole: "But to toast the victory of the French, the free English, and the Irish at the Battle of the Boyne is honorable."