de Grammont was provoked at so ill-timed a jest, more
especially as it carried along with it some appearance of truth. "Mr.
Matta," said he, "do you think it can be very agreeable for a man who
plays with such ill-luck as the Count to be pestered with your insipid
jests? For my part, I am so weary of the game, that I would desist
immediately, if he was not so great a loser." Nothing is more dreaded
by a losing gamester, than such a threat; and the Count, in a softened
tone, told the Chevalier that Mr. Matta might say what he pleased, if
he did not offend him; that, as to himself, it did not give him the
smallest uneasiness.

The Chevalier de Grammont gave the Count far better treatment than he
himself had experienced from the Swiss at Lyons; for he played upon
credit as long as he pleased; which Cameran took so kindly, that he lost
fifteen hundred pistoles, and paid them the next morning. As for Matta,
he was severely reprimanded for the intemperance of his tongue. All
the reason he gave for his conduct was, that he made it a point of
conscience not to suffer the poor Savoyard to be cheated without
informing him of it. "Besides," said he, "it would have given me
pleasure to have seen my infantry engaged with his horse, if he had been
inclined to mischief."

This adventure having recruited their finances, fortune favoured them
the remainder of the campaign, and the Chevalier de Grammont, to prove
that he had only seized upon the Count's effects by way of reprisal,
and to indemnify himself for the losses he had sustained at Lyons, began
from this time to make the same use of his money, that he has been known
to do since upon all occasions. He found out the distressed, in order to
relieve them; officers who had lost their equipage in the war, or their
money at play; soldiers who were disabled in the trenches; in short,
every one felt the influence of his benevolence: but his manner of
conferring a favour exceeded even the favour itself.

Every man possessed of such amiable qualities must meet with success in
all his undertakings. The soldiers knew his person, and adored him. The
generals were sure to meet him in every scene of action, and sought his
company at other times. As soon as fortune declared for him, his first
care was to make restitution, by desiring Cameran to go his halves in
all parties where the odds were in his favour.

An inexhaustible fund of vivacity and good humour gave a certain air of
novelty to w