On the day following Madame d’Urfe asked me to dine with the Chevalier d’Arzigny, a man upwards of eighty, vain, foppish, and consequently ridiculous, known as “The Last of the Beaus.”  However, as he had moved in the court of Louis XIV., he was interesting enough, speaking with all the courtesy of the school, and having a fund of anecdote relating to the Court of that despotic and luxurious monarch.

His follies amused me greatly.  He used rouge, his clothes were cut in the style which obtained in the days of Madame de Sevigne, he professed himself still the devoted lover of his mistress, with whom he supped every night in the company of his lady friends, who were all young and all delightful, and preferred his society to all others; however, in spite of these seductions, he remained faithful to his mistress.

The Chevalier d’Arzigny had an amiability of character which gave whatever he said an appearance of truth, although in his capacity of courtier truth was probably quite unknown to him.  He always wore a bouquet of the most strongly-smelling flowers, such as tuberoses, jonquils, and Spanish jasmine; his wig was plastered down with amber-scented pomade, his teeth were made of ivory, and his eyebrows dyed and perfumed, and his whole person exhaled an odour to which Madame d’Urfe did not object, but which I could scarcely bear.  If it had not been for this drawback I should probably have cultivated his society.  He was a professed Epicurean, and carried out the system with an amazing tranquillity.  He said that he would undertake to receive twenty-four blows with the stick every morning on the condition that he should not die within the twenty-four hours, and that the older he grew the more blows he would gladly submit to.  This was being in love with life with a vengeance.

Another day I dined with M. Charon, who was a counsellor, and in charge of a suit between Madame d’Urfe and her daughter Madame du Chatelet, whom she disliked heartily.  The old counsellor had been the favoured lover of the marchioness forty years before, and he thought himself bound by the remembrance of their love-passages to support the cause of his old sweetheart.  In those days French magistrates thought they had a right to take the side of their friends, or of persons in whom they had an interest, sometimes for friendship’s sake, and sometimes for a monetary consideration; they thought, in fact, that they were justified in selling justice.

M. Charon bored me like the others, as was natural, considering we had no two tastes in common.

The scene was changed the next day when I was amused with the company of M. de Viarme, a young counsellor, a nephew of Madame d’Urfe’s, and his pretty and charming wife.  He was the author of the “Remonstrances to the King,” a work which got him a great reputation, and had been read eagerly by the whole town.  He told me that the business of a counsellor was to oppose everything done by the crown, good and bad.  His reasons for this theory were those given by all minorities, and I do not think I need trouble my readers with them.