Society was much astonished when it came out that M. le Cardinal had disinherited his own nephew,

[De Mancini, Duc de Nevers, a relative of the last Duc de Nivernois.  He married, soon after, Madame de Montespan’s niece.—­Editor’s Note]

a man of merit, handing over his name, his fortune, and his arms to a stranger.  This was an error; in taking the name and arms of Mazarin, young De la Meilleraye was giving up those which he ought to have given up, and assuming those which it behove him to assume.

Nor did he retain the great possessions of the La Meilleraye family.  Herein, certainly, he did not consult his devotion; since the secret and fatherly avowal of M. le Cardinal he had no right whatever to the estates of this family.

Beneath the waving folds of his large scarlet robe, the Cardinal showed such ease and certainty of address, that he never put one in mind of a cardinal and a bishop.  To such manners, however, one was accustomed; in a leading statesman they were not unpleasant.

He often gave magnificent balls, at which he displayed all the accomplishments of his nieces and the sumptuous splendour of his furniture.  At such entertainments, always followed by a grand banquet, he was wont to show a liberality worthy of crowned heads.  One day, after the feast, he announced that a lottery would be held in his palace.

Accordingly, all the guests repaired to his superb gallery, which had just been brilliantly decorated with paintings by Romanelli, and here, spread out upon countless tables, we saw pieces of rare porcelain, scent-bottles of foreign make, watches of every size and shape, chains of pearls or of coral, diamond buckles and rings, gold boxes adorned by portraits set in pearls or in emeralds, fans of matchless elegance,—­in a word, all the rarest and most costly things that luxury and fashion could invent.

The Queens distributed the tickets with every appearance of honesty and good faith.  But I had reason to remark, by what happened to myself, that the tickets had been registered beforehand.  The young Queen, who felt her garter slipping off, came to me in order to tighten it.  She handed me her ticket to hold for a moment, and when she had fastened her garter, I gave her back my ticket instead of her own.  When the Cardinal from his dais read out the numbers in succession, my number won a portrait of the King set in brilliants, much to the surprise of the Queen-mother and his Eminence; they could not get over it.

To me this lottery of the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Changes

[The gallery to which the Marquise alludes is to-day called the Manuscript Gallery.  It belongs to the Royal Library in the Rue de Richelieu.  Mazarin’s house is now the Treasury.]

I brought good luck, and we often talked about it afterwards with the King, regarding it as a sort of prediction or horoscope.

CHAPTER IX.