From this moment M. de Noailles returned more than ever into the good graces of the King.  Everything happened as it had been arranged.  But the secret was betrayed in the execution.  Surprise was felt that at the same moment M. de Noailles sent a request to be recalled, he also sent, and without waiting for a reply, to call M. de Vendame to the command.  What completely raised the veil were the letters patent that he sent immediately after to M. de Vendome, and that it was known he could not have received from the King in the time that had elapsed.  M. de Noailles returned from Catalonia, and was received as his address merited.  He feigned being lame with rheumatism, and played the part for a long time, but forgot himself occasionally, and made his company smile.  He fixed himself at the Court, and gained there much more favour than he could have gained by the war; to the great vexation of Barbezieux.

M. de Luxembourg very strangely married his daughter at this time to the Chevalier de Soissons (an illegitimate son of the Comte de Soissons), brought out from the greatest obscurity by the Comtesse de Nemours, and adopted by her to spite her family:  M. de Luxembourg did not long survive this fine marriage.  At sixty-seven years of age he believed himself twenty-five, and lived accordingly.  The want of genuine intrigues, from which his age and his face excluded him, he supplied by money-power; and his intimacy, and that of his son, with the Prince de Conti and Albergotti was kept up almost entirely by the community of their habits, and the secret parties of pleasure they concocted together.  All the burden of marches, of orders of subsistence, fell upon a subordinate.  Nothing could be more exact than the coup d’oeil of M. de Luxembourg—­ nobody could be more brilliant, more sagacious, more penetrating than he before the enemy or in battle, and this, too, with an audacity, an ease, and at the same time a coolness, which allowed him to see all and foresee all under the hottest fire, and in the most imminent danger:  It was at such times that he was great.  For the rest he was idleness itself.  He rarely walked unless absolutely obliged, spent his time in gaming, or in conversation With his familiars; and had every evening a supper with a chosen few (nearly always the same); and if near a town, the other sex were always agreeably mingled with them.  When thus occupied, he was inaccessible to everybody, and if anything pressing happened, it was his subordinate who attended to it.  Such was at the army the life of this great general, and such it was at Paris, except that the Court and the great world occupied his days, and his pleasures the evenings.  At last, age, temperament, and constitution betrayed him.  He fell ill at Versailles.  Given over by Fagon, the King’s physician, Coretti, an Italian, who had secrets of his own, undertook his cure, and relieved him, but only for a short time.  His door during this illness was besieged by all