will be some months before you are fit for
service again, and that you will need a period of perfect rest to
recover your health. There is a convoy of invalids returning to France
tomorrow, and I think it were best that you should accompany them. There
is no rest to be obtained here, and I know that you will be fretting at
being unable to ride, and at your forced inactivity. I shall give orders
that you are conveyed in a horse litter to Sedan, where my brother, the
Duc de Bouillon, will gladly entertain you for my sake, and you must
remain there until entirely restored to strength.

"I do not think that there will be much doing on this side of the Alps
in the next campaign. Unhappily France has troubles of her own, and will
find it difficult to spare more troops in this direction, and without
reinforcements we can but act on the defensive. Though we may capture
a few towns, there is small chance of any great operations. Indeed,
methinks that it is by no means unlikely that Prince Thomas, seeing that
his effort to rule Savoy in place of his sister-in-law, the duchess, is
likely to end in discredit and loss to himself, will before long open
negotiations with her. Therefore you will be losing nothing by going.
It is to the duchess that I shall commend you rather than to my brother,
who is unfortunately occupied by public matters, and is at present
almost at war with Richelieu.

"He is a man of noble impulses, generous in the extreme, and the soul of
honour, but he knows not how to conceal his feelings; and in these days
no man, even the most powerful, can venture to rail in public against
one who has offended him, when that man happens to be the cardinal. I
love my brother dearly, but I have mixed myself up in no way with his
affairs. I am an officer of the king, and as such I stand aloof from all
parties in the state. The cardinal is his minister; doubtless he has his
faults, but he is the greatest man in France, and the wisest. He lives
and works for the country. It may be true that he is ambitious for
himself, but the glory of France is his chief care. It is for that
purpose that we have entered upon this war, for he sees that if Germany
becomes united under an emperor who is by blood a Spaniard, France
must eventually be crushed, and Spain become absolutely predominant in
Europe. If he is opposed, Richelieu strikes hard, because he deems those
who oppose him as not only his own enemies but as enemies of France.

"As