There is another odd thing that I must relate before quitting this affair.  Tesse, as I have said, was charged with the defence of Toulon by land.  It was a charge of no slight importance.  He was in a country where nothing was prepared, and where everything was wanting; the fleet of the enemy and their army were near at hand, commanded by two of the most skilful captains of the day:  if they succeeded, the kingdom itself was in danger, and the road open to the enemy even to Paris.  A general thus situated would have been in no humour for jesting, it might have been thought.  But this was not the case with Tesse.  He found time to write to Pontchartrain all the details of the war and all that passed amongst our troops in the style of Don Quixote, of whom he called himself the wretched squire and the Sancho; and everything he wrote he adapted to the adventures of that romance.  Pontchartrain showed me these letters; they made him die with laughing, he admired them so; and in truth they were very comical, and he imitated that romance with more wit than I believed him to possess.  It appeared to me incredible, however, that a man should write thus, at such a critical time, to curry, favour with a secretary of state.  I could not have believed it had I not seen it.

VOLUME 6.

CHAPTER XXXIX

I went this summer to Forges, to try, by means of the waters there, to get rid of a tertian fever that quinquina only suspended.  While there I heard of a new enterprise on the part of the Princes of the blood, who, in the discredit in which the King held them, profited without measure by his desire for the grandeur of the illegitimate children, to acquire new advantages which were suffered because the others shared them.  This was the case in question.

After the elevation of the mass—­at the King’s communion—­a folding-chair was pushed to the foot of the altar, was covered with a piece of stuff, and then with a large cloth, which hung down before and behind.  At the Pater the chaplain rose and whispered in the King’s ear the names of all the Dukes who were in the chapel.  The King named two, always the oldest, to each of whom the chaplain advanced and made a reverence.  During the communion of the priest the King rose, and went and knelt down on the bare floor behind this folding seat, and took hold of the cloth; at the same time the two Dukes, the elder on the right, the other on the left, each took hold of a corner of the cloth; the two chaplains took hold of the other two corners of the same cloth, on the side of the altar, all four kneeling, and the captain of the guards also kneeling and behind the King.  The communion received and the oblation taken some moments afterwards, the King remained a little while in the same place, then returned to his own, followed by the two Dukes and the captain of the guards, who took theirs.