Thus, like some of Dumas’ heroes, hating villany as a matter of course, but being by no means ashamed to acknowledge it, the Piedmontese was asked to supper.  He came.  Nevertheless, in the midst of the affair, when De Cameran was losing as fast as he could, Matta’s conscience touched him:  he awoke from a deep sleep, heard the dice shaking, saw the poor Savoyard losing, and advised him to play no more.

‘Don’t you know, Count, you cannot win?’

‘Why?’ asked the Count.

‘Why, faith, because we are cheating you,’ was the reply.

The Chevalier turned round impatiently, ‘Sieur Matta,’ he cried, ’do you suppose it can be any amusement to Monsieur le Comte to be plagued with your ill-timed jests?  For my part, I am so weary of the game, that I swear by Jupiter I can scarcely play any more.’  Nothing is more distasteful to a losing gamester than a hint of leaving off; so the Count entreated the Chevalier to continue, and assured him that ’Monsieur Matta might say what he pleased, for it did not give him the least uneasiness to continue.’

The Chevalier allowed the Count to play upon credit, and that act of courtesy was taken very kindly:  the dupe lost 1,500 pistoles, which he paid the next morning, when Matta was sharply reprimanded for his interference.

‘Faith,’ he answered, ’it was a point of conscience with me; besides, it would have given me pleasure to have seen his Horse engaged with my Infantry, if he had taken anything amiss.’

The sum thus gained set the spendthrifts up; and De Grammont satisfied his conscience by giving it away, to a certain extent, in charity.  It is singular to perceive in the history of this celebrated man that moral taint of character which the French have never lost:  this total absence of right reasoning on all points of conduct, is coupled in our Gallic neighbours with the greatest natural benevolence, with a generosity only kept back by poverty, with impulsive, impressionable dispositions, that require the guidance of a sound Protestant faith to elevate and correct them.

The Chevalier hastened, it is related, to find out distressed comrades, officers who had lost their baggage, or who had been ruined by gaming; or soldiers who had been disabled in the trenches; and his manner of relieving them was as graceful and as delicate as the bounty he distributed was welcome.  He was the darling of the army.  The poor soldier knew him personally, and adored him; the general was sure to meet him in the scenes of action, and to seek his company in those of security.

And, having thus retrieved his finances, the gay-hearted Chevalier used, henceforth, to make De Cameran go halves with him in all games in which the odds were in his own favour.  Even the staid Calvinist, Turenne, who had not then renounced, as he did in after-life, the Protestant faith, delighted in the off-hand merriment of the Chevalier.  It was towards the end of the siege of Trino, that De Grammont went to visit that general in some new quarters, where Turenne received him, surrounded by fifteen or twenty officers.  According to the custom of the day, cards were introduced, and the general asked the Chevalier to play.