My father passed the rest of his long life surrounded by friends, and held in high esteem by the King and his ministers.  His advice was often sought for by them, and was always acted upon.  He never consoled himself for the loss of Louis XIII., to whom he owed his advancement and his fortune.  Every year he kept sacred the day of his death, going to Saint-Denis, or holding solemnities in his own house if at Blaye.  Veneration, gratitude, tenderness, ever adorned his lips every time he spoke of that monarch.

CHAPTER IV

After having paid the last duties to my father I betook myself to Mons to join the Royal Roussillon cavalry regiment, in which I was captain.  The King, after stopping eight or ten days with the ladies at Quesnoy, sent them to Namur, and put himself at the head of the army of M. de Boufflers, and camped at Gembloux, so that his left was only half a league distant from the right of M. de Luxembourg.  The Prince of Orange was encamped at the Abbey of Pure, was unable to receive supplies, and could not leave his position without having the two armies of the King to grapple with:  he entrenched himself in haste, and bitterly repented having allowed himself to be thus driven into a corner.  We knew afterwards that he wrote several times to his intimate friend the Prince de Vaudemont, saying that he was lost, and that nothing short of a miracle could save him.

We were in this position, with an army in every way infinitely superior to that of the Prince of Orange, and with four whole months before us to profit by our strength, when the King declared on the 8th of June that he should return to Versailles, and sent off a large detachment of the army into Germany.  The surprise of the Marechal de Luxembourg was without bounds.  He represented the facility with which the Prince of Orange might now be beaten with one army and pursued by another; and how important it was to draw off detachments of the Imperial forces from Germany into Flanders, and how, by sending an army into Flanders instead of Germany, the whole of the Low Countries would be in our power.  But the King would not change his plans, although M. de Luxembourg went down on his knees and begged him not to allow such a glorious opportunity to escape.  Madame de Maintenon, by her tears when she parted from his Majesty, and by her letters since, had brought about this resolution.

The news had not spread on the morrow, June 9th.  I chanced to go alone to the quarters of M. de Luxembourg, and was surprised to find not a soul there; every one had gone to the King’s army.  Pensively bringing my horse to a stand, I was ruminating on a fact so strange, and debating whether I should return to my tent or push on to the royal camp, when up came M. le Prince de Conti with a single page and a groom leading a horse.  “What are you doing there?” cried he, laughing at my surprise.  Thereupon