Having thus missed our blow, the Comte de La Rochepot and the rest of them retired to their several seats in the country; but my engagements detained me at Paris, where I was so retired that I spent all my time in my study; and if ever I was seen abroad, it was with all the reserve of a pious ecclesiastic; we were all so true to one another in keeping this adventure secret, that it never got the least wind while the Cardinal lived, who was a minister that had the best intelligence in the world; but after his death it was discovered by the imprudence of Tret and Etourville.  I call it imprudence, for what greater weakness can men be guilty of than to declare themselves to have been capable of what is dangerous in the first instance?

To return to the history of the Comte de Soissons, I observed before that he had retired to Sedan for safety, which he could not expect at Court.  He wrote to the King, assuring his Majesty of his fidelity, and that while he stayed in that place he would undertake nothing prejudicial to his service.  He was most mindful of his promise; was not to be biassed by all the offers of Spain or the Empire, but rejected with indignation the overtures of Saint-Ibal and of Bardouville, who would have persuaded him to take up arms.  Campion, one of his domestics, whom he had left at Paris to mind his affairs at Court, told me these particulars by the Count’s express orders, and I still remember this passage in one of his letters to Campion:  “The men you know are very urgent with me to treat with the enemy, and accuse me of weakness because I fear the examples of Charles de Bourbon and Robert d’Artois.”  He was ordered to show me this letter and desire my opinion thereupon.  I took my pen, and, at a little distance from the answer he had already begun, I wrote these words: 

“And I do accuse them of folly.”  The reasons upon which my opinion was grounded were these:  The Count was courageous in the highest degree of what is commonly called valour, and had a more than ordinary share in that boldness of mind which we call resolution.  The first is common and to be frequently met with among the vulgar, but the second is rarer than can be imagined, and yet abundantly more necessary for great enterprises; and is there a greater in the world than heading a party?  The command of an army is without comparison of less intricacy, for there are wheels within wheels necessary for governing the State, but then they are not near so brittle and delicate.  In a word, I am of opinion there are greater qualities necessary to make a good head of a party than to make an emperor who is to govern the whole world, and that resolution ought to run parallel with judgment,—­I say, with heroic judgment, which is able to distinguish the extraordinary from what we call the impossible.

The Count had not one grain of this discerning faculty, which is but seldom to be met with in the sublimest genius.  His character was mean to a degree, and consequently susceptible of unreasonable jealousies and distrusts, which of all characters is the most opposite to that of a good partisan, who is indispensably obliged in many cases to suppress, and in all to conceal, the best-grounded suspicions.