She endeavoured in vain, to reclaim her libertine husband, and to call him to a sense of his situation when he was on his death-bed.  Louis XIV. sent the Marquis de Dangeau to convert him, and to talk to him on a subject little thought of by De Grammont—­the world to come.  After the Marquis had been talking for some time, De Grammont turned to his wife and said, ’Countess, if you don’t look to it, Dangeau will juggle you out of my conversion.’  St. Evremond said he would gladly die to go off with so successful a bon-mot.

He became however, in time, serious, if not devout or penitent.  Ninon de l’Enclos having written to St. Evremond that the Count de Grammont had not only recovered but had become devout, St. Evremond answered her in these words:—­

’I have learned with a great deal of pleasure that the Count de Grammont has recovered his former health, and acquired a new devotion.  Hitherto I have been contented with being a plain honest man; but I must do something more:  and I only wait for your example to become a devotee.  You live in a country where people have wonderful advantages of saving their souls:  there, vice is almost as opposite to the mode as virtue; sinning passes for ill-breeding, and shocks decency and good-manners, as much as religion.  Formerly it was enough to be wicked, now one must be a scoundrel withal to be damned in France.’

A report having been circulated that De Grammont was dead, St. Evremond expressed deep regret.  The report was contradicted by Ninon de l’Enclos.  The Chevalier was then eighty-six years of age; ‘nevertheless he was,’ Ninon says, ’so young, that I think him as lively as when he hated sick people, and loved them after they had recovered their health;’ a trait very descriptive of a man whose good-nature was always on the surface, but whose selfishness was deep as that of most wits and beaux, who are spoiled by the world, and who, in return, distrust and deceive the spoilers.  With this long life of eighty-six years, endowed as De Grammont was with elasticity of spirits, good fortune, considerable talent, an excellent position, a wit that never ceased to flow in a clear current; with all these advantages, what might he not have been to society, had his energy been well applied, his wit innocent, his talents employed worthily, and his heart as sure to stand muster as his manners?

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 8:  M. de Grammont visited England during the Protectorate.  His second visit, after being forbidden the court by Louis XIV., was in 1662.]

[Footnote 9:  The Earl of Dorset married Elizabeth, widow of Charles Berkeley, Earl of Falmouth, and daughter of Hervey Bagot, Esq., of Pipe Hall, Warwickshire, who died without issue.  He married, 7th March, 1684-5, Lady Mary Compton, daughter of James Earl of Northampton.]

[Footnote 10:  Lord Rochester succeeded to the Earldom in 1659.  It was created by Charles II. in 1652, at Paris.]