besieged; consequently, sieges were of some length, and young men had an opportunity of gaining some knowledge.  Many brave actions were performed on each side during the siege of Trino; a great deal of fatigue was endured, and considerable losses sustained; but fatigue was no more considered, hardships were no more felt in the trenches, gravity was at an end with the generals, and the troops were no longer dispirited after the arrival of the Chevalier Grammont.  Pleasure was his pursuit, and he made it universal.

Among the officers in the army, as in all other places, there are men of real merit, or pretenders to it.  The latter endeavoured to imitate the Chevalier Grammont in his most shining qualities, but without success; the former admired his talents and courted his friendship.  Of this number was Matta: 

[Matta, or Matha, of whom Hamilton has drawn so striking a picture, is said to have been of the house of Bourdeille, which had the honour to produce Brautome and Montresor.  The combination of indolence and talent, of wit and simplicity, of bluntness and irony, with which he is represented, may have been derived from tradition, but could only have been united into the inimitable whole by the pen of Hamilton.  Several of his bons-mots have been preserved; but the spirit evaporates in translation.  “Where could I get this nose,” said Madame D’Albret, observing a slight tendency to a flush in that feature.  “At the side board, Madame,” answered Matta.  When the same lady, in despair at her brother’s death, refused all nourishment, Matta administered this blunt consolation:  “If you are resolved, madame, never again to swallow food, you do well; but if ever you mean to eat upon any future occasion, believe me, you may as well begin just now.”  Madame Caylus, in her Souvenirs, commemorates the simple and natural humour of Matta as rendering him the most delightful society in the world.  Mademoiselle, in her Memoirs, alludes to his pleasantry in conversation, and turn for deep gaming.  When the Memoirs of Grammont were subjected to the examination of Fontenelle, then censor of the Parisian press, he refused to license them, or account of the scandalous conduct imputed to Grammont in this party at quinze.  The count no sooner heard of this than he hastened to Fontenelle, and having joked him for being more tender of his reputation than he was himself, the license was instantly issued.  The censor might have retorted upon Grammont the answer which the count made to a widow who received coldly his compliments of condolence on her husband’s death:  “Nay, madame, if that is the way you take it, I care as little about it as you do.”  He died in 1674.  “Matta est mort sans confession,” says Madame Maintenon, in a letter to her brother.  Tome I., p. 67.]

He was agreeable in his person, but still more by the natural turn of his wit; he was plain and simple in his manners, but endued with a quick discernment and refined delicacy, and full of candour and integrity in all his actions.  The Chevalier Grammont was not long in discovering his amiable qualities; an acquaintance was soon formed, and was succeeded by the strictest intimacy.