If he's honestly interested in me, he can come courting the proper way.
If you were courting me from day one, as you said at the restaurant, then why were you so reluctant to get married?
As heir-apparent he collected a bodyguard, and studiously courting personal popularity by a pretended interest in the administration of kingly justice, ingratiated himself with the mass.
Voltaire had made, however, a useful friend in another grand seigneur, as profligate and nearly as intelligent, the duke of Richelieu, and with him he passed 1724 and the next year chiefly, recasting Mariamne (which was now successful), writing the comedy of L'Indiscret, and courting the queen, the ministers, the favourites and everybody who seemed worth.
Duke Frederick of Austria had hitherto sheltered John's flight; but, laid under the ban of the empire, attacked by powerful armies, and feeling that he was courting ruin, he preferred to give up the pontiff who had trusted to him.