everybody, always
saying some biting remark with dove-like gentleness. Ministers,
generals, fortunate people and their families, were the most ill-treated.
He had, as it were, usurped the right of saying and doing what he
pleased; nobody daring to be angry with him. The Grammonts alone were
excepted. He always remembered the hospitality and the protection he had
received from them at the outset of his life. He liked them; he
interested himself in them; he was in respect before them. Old Comte
Grammont took advantage of this and revenged the Court by the sallies he
constantly made against Lauzun, who never returned them or grew angry,
but gently avoided him. He always did a good deal for the children of
his sisters.

During the plague the Bishop of Marseilles had much signalised himself by
wealth spent and danger incurred. When the plague had completely passed
away, M. de Lauzun asked M. le Duc d'Orleans for an abbey for the Bishop.
The Regent gave away some livings soon after, and forgot M. de
Marseilles. Lauzun pretended to be ignorant of it, and asked M. le Duc
d'Orleans if he had had the goodness to remember him. The Regent was
embarrassed. The Duc de Lauzun, as though to relieve him from his
embarrassment, said, in a gentle and respectful tone, "Monsieur, he will
do better another time," and with this sarcasm rendered the Regent dumb,
and went away smiling. The story got abroad, and M. le Duc d'Orleans
repaired his forgetfulness by the bishopric of Laon, and upon the refusal
of M. de Marseilles to change, gave him a fat abbey.

M. de Lauzun hindered also a promotion of Marshal of France by the
ridicule he cast upon the candidates. He said to the Regent, with that
gentle and respectful tone he knew so well how to assume, that in case
any useless Marshals of France (as he said) were made, he begged his
Royal Highness to remember that he was the oldest lieutenant-general of
the realm, and that he had had the honour of commanding armies with the
patent of general. I have elsewhere related other of his witty remarks.
He could not keep them in; envy and jealousy urged him to utter them, and
as his bon-mots always went straight to the point, they were always much
repeated.

We were on terms of continual intimacy; he had rendered me real solid
friendly services of himself, and I paid him all sorts of respectful
attentions, and he paid me the same. Nevertheless, I did not always
escape his tongue; and on on