“You are in possession of a thousand splendid qualifications which distinguish you here:  generous, benevolent, elegant, and polite; and for your engaging wit, inimitable.  Upon a strict examination, perhaps, all this would not be found literally true; but these are brilliant marks; and since it is granted that you possess them, do not show yourself here in any other light:  for, in love, if your manner of paying your addresses can be so denominated, you do not in the least resemble the picture I have just now drawn.”

“My little philosophical monitor,” said the Chevalier de Grammont, “you talk here as if you were the Cato of Normandy.”  “Do I say anything untrue?” replied Saint Evremond:  “Is it not a fact, that as soon as a woman pleases you, your first care is to find out whether she has any other lover, and your second how to plague her; for the gaining her affection is the last thing in your thoughts.  You seldom engage in intrigues, but to disturb the happiness of others:  a mistress who has no lovers would have no charms for you, and if she has, she would be invaluable.  Do not all the places through which you have passed furnish me with a thousand examples?  Shall I mention your coup d’essai at Turin? the trick you played at Fontainebleau, where you robbed the Princess Palatine’s courier upon the highway? and for what purpose was this fine exploit, but to put you in possession of some proofs of her affection for another, in order to give her uneasiness and confusion by reproaches and menaces, which you had no right to use?

“Who but yourself ever took it into his head to place himself in ambush upon the stairs, to disturb a man in an intrigue, and to pull him back by the leg when he was half way up to his mistress’s chamber? yet did not you use your friend the Duke of Buckingham in this manner, when he was stealing at night to------although you were not in the least his rival?  How many spies did not you send out after d’Olonne?

[Mademoiselle de la Loupe, who is mentioned in De Retz’s Memoirs, vol. iii., p. 95.  She married the Count d’Olonne, and became famous for her gallantries, of which the Count de Bussi speaks so much, in his History of the Amours of the Gauls.  Her maiden name was Catherine Henrietta d’Angennes, and she was daughter to Charles d’Angennes, Lord of la Loupe, Baron of Amberville, by Mary du Raynier.  There is a long character of her by St. Evremond, in his works, vol. i., p. 17.  The same writer, mentioning the concern of some ladies for the death of the Duke of Candale, says, “But his true mistress (the Countess d’Olonne) made herself famous by the excess of her affliction, and had, in my opinion, been happy, if she had kept it on to the last.  One amour is creditable to a lady; and I know not whether it be not more advantageous to their reputation than never to have been in love.”—­St. Evremond’s works, vol. ii., p. 24.]

“How many tricks, frauds, and persecutions,