no good effect.  La Capelle, left without resources, fell like the places around.  As I have said before, Louis XIII. did not long allow the Spaniards to enjoy the advantages they had gained.  All the towns in Picardy were soon retaken, and the King, urged on by Chavigny, determined to punish the governors of these places for surrendering them so easily.  My father’s uncle was included with the others.  This injustice was not to be borne.  My father represented the real state of the case and used every effort, to save his uncle, but it was in vain.  Stung to the quick he demanded permission to retire, and was allowed to do so.  Accordingly, at the commencement of 1637, he left for Blaye; and remained there until the death of Cardinal Richelieu.  During this retirement the King frequently wrote to him, in a language they had composed so as to speak before people without being understood; and I possess still many of these letters, with much regret that I am ignorant of their contents.

Chavigny served my father another ill turn.  At the Cardinal’s death my father had returned to the Court and was in greater favour than ever.  Just before Louis XIII. died he gave my father the place of first master of the horse, but left his name blank in the paper fixing the appointment.  The paper was given into the hands of Chavigny.  At the King’s death he had the villainy, in concert with the Queen-regent, to fill in the name of Comte d’Harcourt, instead of that the King had instructed him of.  The indignation of my father was great, but, as he could obtain no redress, he retired once again to his Government of Blaye.  Notwithstanding the manner in which he had been treated by the Queen-regent, he stoutly defended her cause when the civil war broke out, led by M. le Prince.  He garrisoned Blaye at his own expense, incurring thereby debts which hung upon him all his life, and which I feel the effects of still, and repulsed all attempts of friends to corrupt his loyalty.  The Queen and Mazarin could not close their eyes to his devotion, and offered him, while the war was still going on, a marechal’s baton, or the title of foreign prince.  But he refused both, and the offer was not renewed when the war ended.  These disturbances over, and Louis XIV. being married, my father came again to Paris, where he had many friends.  He had married in 1644, and had had, as I have said, one only daughter.  His wife dying in 1670, and leaving him without male children, he determined, however much he might be afflicted at the loss he had sustained, to marry again, although old.  He carried out his resolution in October of the same year, and was very pleased with the choice he had made.  He liked his new wife so much, in fact, that when Madame de Montespan obtained for her a place at the Court, he declined it at once.  At his age—­it was thus he wrote to Madame de Montespan, he had taken a wife not for the Court, but for himself.  My mother, who was absent when the letter announcing the appointment was sent, felt much regret, but never showed it.