won had cost him dear, as he had lost his shoes; he replied, laughing, that it had been said so, but the truth was, that, happening to be at the guards’ attack, somebody came and told him that the king had pushed forward to M. de Gadaignes’ attack, that he had ridden up full gallop to bring back the king, who had put himself in too great peril, and that, having dismounted at a very moist spot, his shoe had come off, and he had been obliged to re-shoe himself in the king’s presence.” [Journal d’ Oliver d’ Ormesson, t. ii. p. 542.]

Louis XIV. had good reason to “push forward to the attack and put himself in too great peril;” a rumor had circulated that, having run the same risk at the siege of Lille, he had let a moment’s hesitation appear; the old Duke of Charost, captain of his guards, had come up to him, and, “Sir,” he had whispered in the young king’s ear, “the wine is drawn, and it must be drunk.”  Louis XIV. had finished his reconnoissance, not without a feeling of gratitude towards Charost for preferring before his life that honor which ended by becoming his idol.

The king was back at St. Germain, preparing enormous armaments for the month of April.  He had given the Prince of Conde the government of Franche-Comte.  “I had always esteemed your father,” he said to the young Duke of Enghien, “but I had never loved him; now I love him as much as I esteem him.”  Young Louvois, already in high favor with the king, as well as his father, Michael Le Tellier, had contributed a great deal towards getting the prince’s services appreciated; they still smarted under the reproaches of M. de Turenne touching the deficiency of supplies for the troops before Lille in 1667.

War seemed to be imminent; the last days of the armistice were at hand.  “The opinion prevailing in France as to peace is a disease which is beginning to spread very much,” wrote Louvois in the middle of March, “but we shall soon find a cure for it, as here is the time approaching for taking the field.  You must publish almost everywhere that it is the Spaniards who do not want peace.”  Louvois lied brazenfacedly; the Spaniards were without resources, but they had even less of spirit than of resources; they consented to the abandonment of all the places won in the Low Countries during 1667.  A congress was opened at Aix-la-Chapelle, presided over by the nuncio of the new pope, Clement IX., as favorable to France as his predecessor, Innocent X., had been to Spain.  “A phantom arbiter between phantom plenipotentiaries,” says Voltaire, in the Siecle de Louis XIV.  The real negotiations were going on at St. Germain.  “I did not look merely,” writes Louis XIV., “to profit by the present conjuncture, but also to put myself in a position to turn to my advantage those which might probably arrive.  In view of the great increments that my fortune might receive, nothing seemed to me more necessary than to establish for myself amongst my smaller neighbors such a character for moderation