so soon after supper, and that she had not had time to digest it. Oh, as for her digestion, Madam,' said I, 'you need be under no uneasiness, I assure you; your cousin has not so bad a stomach as you imagine.' But, Sir,' said she, in the most niais manner possible, you will do us the honour to take a poor breakfast before you set out? My God, madam,' said I, are you not satisfied with the supper you have given us? You would really cram your guests.' She replied, that I was too obliging, and that since her cousin chose to retire, she would inquire whether there was a fire in her room. The Countess replied, that that need not hinder her going, and that she could not suffer from the change. In fact, the wood was not kindled in the sitting room, and the only appearance of a fire was a great smoke which began to suffocate us. Our hostess, therefore, led the way to the Countess's chamber, but we were much surprised at finding that we had to cross a large court a foot deep in snow; however, to get out of the execrable room in which we had suffered so much, we thought nothing difficult; on the contrary, we found the advantage of being accustomed to hardships, for we did not feel the change in this long passage through the court. The Countess having at length reached her chamber, where the fire was not better than the one in the sitting-room, we prepared to set out for ours. I must express myself so, for it was another long journey across the court. The lady insisted on conducting us, so we let her do her own way. As soon as she had left us, we went back to the Countess's room, to laugh with her, 'at our ease, at all that had passed, and, having seen her put to bed, we retired. I shall not attempt to describe her chamber; I shall only say, that though it was extraordinarily dirty and ruinous, it was a palace compared to ours. The place in which we were put was used as a cooper's work-shop, and the cooper was dislodged for our accommodation. When our heads were on the pillow, the bed-clothes scarcely came below our knees, so that we were forced to tie the corners of a wretched feather bed, which, laid upon some straw, was our only bedding, to the sheets and coverlid, to keep our legs covered, so that, in the morning, we were more tired than if we had been riding post. It might be imagined we were up early, yet we found the Countess ready to get into her carriage. Till now,' said she, 'I would have let you return to Moulins, if you had wished it, but now you are too near my house not to come on.' I did not need much pressing, as may be imagined, and, in the evening, we arrived at her house. Her husband was not there; he was gone on a journey of three or four weeks, so that Beauvoir and I resolved to stay a fortnight with her; this was not without inconvenience, for we had neither change of linen, nor valets to wait on us. The Countess, who would not allow me to feel the least annoyance in her house, gave me one of her pages to dress me, and shirts and collars of her husband's. We had the best entertainment possible, with the greatest magnificence and cleanliness. There was a greater quantity of plate than in any other country house I ever saw; the table and bed linen were incomparably fine; the furniture was old fashioned, but in such good condition that its age was only perceptible from the richness of the stuffs, which were

such as are no longer made. I slept under a dais, and might, if I would, have eaten with a cadenas :* in short, this house, and the one we had just left, were the antipodes, and I told the Countess she had made us stop at her cousin's, on purpose to astonish us the more with the grandeur of her own."

One way in which the Countess displays her grandeur and her hospitality, is remarkable.

"I slept in a large room, and, as soon as I was in bed, the page went out and locked the door. The house was built like those which are said to be haunted, so that I, who fear ghosts without believing in them, always thrust my head under the bed-clothes as soon as I lay down. One night, when I was, as usual, buried in the bed, I heard a great noise at my door, which opened, and I heard some one walk across the room, and undraw the curtains of my bed. I looked up, and saw six women whom I did not know, some with lighted torches, and others with basins filled with meats and sweatmeats which they set upon a table. I thought of the stories that are told to children of feasts, served thus by unknown people, who came down the chimney. While I was thinking of this, I saw three young ladies whom I knew, enter, followed by the Countess in an elegant undress. She came and sat on my bedside, and having ordered the basins to be handed to us, we ate as if we had not supped; after we had done, we left them to the young ladies, among whom was a kind of governess, who had eaten with us, and who never left us. I made her and the Countess lie down on my bed, on the right and left of me; I had the curtains drawn that the poor girls might eat at their ease, and this way we chatted for two hours."

After exchanging promises of eternal love, and of constant correspondence, which were broken in six months, they separated" with less grief," as he says, "than an absence, which might be interminable, deserved." The sequel must not be omitted.

"Four years after, the Countess came to Paris. Bussy, from curiosity, he says, rather than any remains of love, asks one of his friends to introduce him to her, not,' says he, that I had any doubt of her remembering me, but I wished to be discreet.' She, indeed, pushed discretion as far as it could go, for when Le Bosquet said, as I advanced to salute her, 'M. de Bussy, Madam.' 'What Bussy?? said she, looking at me. Bussy Rabutin,' replied he, with simplicity. 'No, no, Madam,' said I; he is jesting, I am Bussy Moulins. She blushed, and excused herself for not knowing_me, on the plea, that four years made a great alteration in people. True, Madam,' replied

* A golden box, containing the gold knife, fork, and spoon, laid for kings and princes.

I, and some alter so much even in six months that one cannot recognize them.””

Bussy was sent to the Bastile, on account of some alleged disorders committed by his regiment at Moulins, which he denies, and attributes his disgrace solely to the "original sin" of some offence given by his father to Desnoyers, then secretary of state. After an imprisonment of three months, his father, and afterwards his mother, go to petition Richelieu for his release. He says:

"I cannot help here remarking the absolute power of the cardinal, who had put things on such a footing, that, in the distribution of favours, the king usually went for nothing. He had so perfectly succeeded in gaining over, or in intimidating, the people who were around the young monarch, that they concealed from him whatever the cardinal desired, and he never knew of a battle which la MotteHodancourt lost in Catalonia, because Richelieu wished to make him a Marshal of France, (in which he succeeded,) and the knowledge of this disaster might have hindered his promotion."

"This," says he, at the conclusion of this affair, "is the history of my imprisonment in 1641, which I endured five months, solely through the hatred of a minister, who, while he affected to be devout and even charitable, never forgave." Disgusted with his ill fortune, he now resolved to quit the service, and, to use his own noble turn of expression, to "chercher de la subsistance dans un mariage."

"My father," says he, "was desirous of seeing me established, but he wished me to form one of those marriages, in which a rich widow falls desperately in love with a handsome young fellow he wanted somebody to take me with my expectations, and to ask him for nothing. He was constantly talking to me of Chabot's good fortune, whom the Duchess de Rohan had married for his good air and his fine dancing; and I saw that he was rather angry with me that, being, as I was, tolerably good looking, no Infanta had as yet carried me off."

Unfortunately for his father's schemes, he falls in love with a pretty cousin. The young lady, however, withdraws from the contest with parental authority with becoming philosophy; and Bussy is contracted by his father to Gabrielle de Toulongeon. Of his marriage, he speaks thus: "Some time after this, I married. It was at Alonne, near Autun, on the 28th of April, 1643. I lived there near a year, without hearing any thing of my cousin; after which, I found her at Paris, married as well as myself, and handsomer than ever." These were two excellent reasons for renewing their intercourse upon a footing

somewhat less sentimental than before. Of his wife, he says not one word, not even of that subsistance,' which, we are left to conclude, he did her the honour to derive from her, and which, in the absence of all other alleged inducements to a step so hateful to him, as he professes marriage to have been, we are surprised not to find mentioned. During the next two years, he was'un espèce de Provincial,' when he buys the place of Lieutenant de la Compagnie de Chevaux legers d' Ordonnance to Henry de Bourbon, father of the great Condé, for twelve thousand crowns. He was appointed Lieutenant du Roi, in Nivernois; for which he had, to his great surprise, to pay 7500 livres. This little tax," he says,

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"6 arose out of the thrifty disposition of Cardinal Mazarin." We here find, incidentally, that one celebrated and omnipotent minister had been removed from the stage, and succeeded by another scarcely less powerful, yet this event does not call forth so much as a bare mention of it. Public men, or public affairs, seem, indeed, to have been regarded by the noble suitors for places and pensions with interest, only in as far as they might affect their attainment of those most desirable ends. After taking possession of his post, he joins the army at Philisburg. We shall not follow him through the details of the campaign; but shall only select from it such incidents as are illustrative of the state of manners, or of the characters of celebrated men.

The following bon mot of Marshal de Grammont must not be omitted.

"As the armies marched in several columns, our's halted at the gates of the little town of Holac, and we dined in the suburbs. Marshal de Grammont having kept me to dinner with him, and several of the officers of the army, we were rather jovial when the Counts de Holac came to pay their respects to the Marshal. They all spoke French badly enough to be able to bore us excessively with their compliments; and, moreover, there were a great number of them, brothers, all counts after the German fashion, and they came in, one after another, at long intervals. The Marshal, tired of so many introductions, turned to me with his glass in his hand, and said, with that air of natural pleasantry which he had, Well, come, M. de Bussy, I'll give you the health of the Counts of Holac, if there be a hundred of them.' The Marshal's annoyance made us burst out a laughing, and all the Holacs returned thanks with low bows, as if they felt themselves greatly obliged to him."

The following account of a duel, contains circumstances not less curious than the former one we quoted, but marked by a still more extraordinary character of insolence and brutality.

"One day, as the army was passing through one of the large

deserted villages of Flanders, the Chevalier d' Isigny, ensign of the Gendarmes d'Enghien, and I, being at the head of my light horse, and being half dead with thirst, we saw a well at which some foot soldiers who had their officers with them, were drawing water. We rode up to it, and as I did not choose to wait, I asked the men in a civil manner to give me the bucket. Their officer, who was a brutal fellow, answered, without looking at me, that I was on horseback, and that they were in a greater haste than I. I turned to three or four of my light horsemen, and told them to bring me the bucket, which they did; and after I had drank, I gave it to the Chevalier d' Isigny, who handed it to the light horsemen, who were coming up every minute; so that the officer of foot was obliged to go off without drinking, and as he grumbled a little at going, the Chevalier said to me, laughing, 'Do you hear, Bussy? that fine fellow is threatening us, he is very angry.' I made no answer, nor the officer either, and we rejoined our cavalry, thinking of any thing in the world rather than that. On our march we saw this officer again, who apparently had been inquiring who we were. I recognized him first, and pointing him out to the Chevalier, I said in joke, There is your man of the well, come to ask who we are; if he ask either of us to draw our swords, the other must go out with him.' 'Of course,' replied the Chevalier; and we thought no more of it. The next day, which was the sixth after our adventure, when we reached Bergues, the Chevalier d'Isigny came to my tent, to tell me that the officer we had laughed at, had sent one of his brother officers to call him out; that the one was an ensign of the infantry regiment Mazarin, and the other, his second, a lieutenant; that he had measured their swords, and that we were to fight with short swords, like that I wore. We went to the place of meeting; where, putting off our doublets, I soon wounded the man with whom I fought, in the arm. I disarmed him, and went to separate the others. As we were putting on our doublets, the Chevalier's antagonist, turning to me, said, 'It was not my fault, I assure you, sir, that we did not terminate our affair first.' And, by God,' replied the Chevalier, it was much less my fault than yours, my fine fellow; for I could not advance so fast as you retreated. The officer made no reply to this, because two or three of our friends, who knew of our quarrel, came up, and, besides, he had other intentions. In fact, the next morning, he sent a note to the Chevalier, reminding him of the affront he had received from him the preceding evening, and desiring to fight him without seconds, on that account. The Chevalier took a brace of pistols, and went to meet him; they loaded them before each other, and when the Chevalier put his finger on the trigger, his glove, which was very large, pressed it, and the pistol went off in the air. The ensign told him to give up his sword, which he rudely refused. The ensign fired, and broke the Chevalier's thigh; and, on his falling, the other told him that if he was not satisfied he would reload the two pistols, and lie down by him, and they would both fire again. The Chevalier told him he was satisfied, and only asked him to tell me to come directly, and bring him a confessor, and a surgeon: I ran there with both. He con