he by eight months; and if the expression be allowed in speaking of young people, so unequal in position, friendship had united us.  I made up my mind, therefore, to escape from my leading-strings; but pass lightly over the artifices I used in order to attain success.  I addressed myself to my mother.  I soon saw that she trifled with me.  I had recourse to my father, whom I made believe that the King, having led a great siege this year, would rest the next.  I said nothing of this to my mother, who did not discover my plot until it was just upon the point, of execution.

The King had determined rigidly to adhere to a rule he had laid down—­ namely, that none who entered the service, except his illegitimate children, and the Princes of the blood royal, should be exempt from serving for a year in one of his two companies of musketeers; and passing afterwards through the ordeal of being private or subaltern in one of the regiments of cavalry or infantry, before receiving permission to purchase a regiment.  My father took me, therefore, to Versailles, where he had not been for many years, and begged of the King admission for me into the Musketeers.  It was on the day of St. Simon and St. Jude, at half-past twelve, and just as his Majesty came out of the council.

The King did my father the honour of embracing him three times, and then turned towards me.  Finding that I was little and of delicate appearance, he said I was still very young; to which my father replied, that I should be able in consequence to serve longer.  Thereupon the King demanded in which of the two companies he wished to put me; and my father named that commanded by Maupertuis, who was one of his friends.  The King relied much upon the information given him by the captains of the two companies of Musketeers, as to the young men who served in them.  I have reason for believing, that I owe to Maupertuis the first good opinion that his Majesty had of me.

Three months after entering the Musketeers, that is to say, in the March of the following year, the King held a review of his guards, and of the gendarmerie, at Compiegne, and I mounted guard once at the palace.  During this little journey there was talk of a much more important one.  My joy was extreme; but my father, who had not counted upon this, repented of having believed me, when I told him that the King would no doubt rest at Paris this year.  My mother, after a little vexation and pouting at finding me enrolled by my father against her will, did not fail to bring him to reason, and to make him provide me with an equipment of thirty-five horses or mules, and means to live honourably.

A grievous annoyance happened in our house about three weeks before my departure.  A steward of my father named Tesse, who had been with him many years, disappeared all at once with fifty thousand francs due to various tradesfolk.  He had written out false receipts from these people, and put them in his accounts.  He was a little man, gentle, affable, and clever; who had shown some probity, and who had many friends.