for him.  What does he lack?  He dies in the meridian of his fame.  Sometimes, by living on, the star pales.  It is safer to cut to the quick, especially in the case of heroes whose actions are all so watched.  M. de Turenne did not feel death:  count you that for nothing?” Turenne was sixty-four; he had become a convert to Catholicism in 1668, seriously and sincerely, as he did everything.  For him Bossuet had written his Exposition of faith.  Heroic souls are rare, and those that are heroic and modest are rarer still:  that was the distinctive feature of M. de Turenne.  “When a man boasts that he has never made mistakes in war, he convinces me that he has not been long at it,” he would say.  At his death, France considered herself lost.  “The premier-president of the court of aids has an estate in Champagne, and the farmer of it came the other day to demand to have the contract dissolved; he was asked why:  he answered that in M. de Turenne’s time one could gather in with safety, and count upon the lands in that district, but that, since his death, everybody was going away, believing that the enemy was about to enter Champagne.” [Lettres de Madame de Sevigne.] “I should very much like to have only two hours’ talk with the shade of M. de Turenne,” said the Prince of Conde, on setting out to take command of the army of the Rhine, after a check received by Marshal Crequi.  “I would take the consequences of his plans if I could only get at his views, and make myself master of the knowledge he had of the country, and of Montecuculli’s tricks of feint.”  “God preserves you for the sake of France, my lord,” people said to him; but the prince made no reply beyond a shrug of the shoulders.

[Illustration:  TURENNE.——­444]

It was his last campaign.  The king had made eight marshals, “change for a Turenne.”  Crequi began by getting beaten before Treves, which surrendered to the enemy.  “Why did—­the marshal give battle?” asked a courtier.  The king turned round quickly.  “I have heard,” said he, “that the Duke of Weimar, after the death of the great Gustavus, commanded the Swedish allies of France; one Parabere, an old blue ribbon, said to him, speaking of the last battle, which he had lost, ’Sir, why did you give it?’ ‘Sir,’ answered Weimar, ‘because I thought I should win it.’  Then, leaning over towards somebody else, he asked, ’Who is that fool with the blue ribbon?’” The Germans retired.  Conde returned to Chantilly once more, never to go out of it again.  Montecuculli, old and ill, refused to serve any longer.  “A man who has had the honor of fighting against Mahomet Coprogli, against the prince, and against M. de Turenne, ought not to compromise his glory against people who are only just beginning to command armies,” said the, veteran general to the emperor on taking his retirement.  The chiefs were disappearing from the scene, the heroic period of the war was over.