disgust and impatience, said,
"Cousin, you are now a good forty-four years old; at that age you ought
to be able to take care of yourself. Spare me all your grievances, and
do what pleases you."

On leaving Mademoiselle, he came to my apartment and told me about all
this nonsense. I then informed him of what I had heard by letter the day
before. Lauzun, while still carrying on with the fastest ladies of the
Court and the town, had just wheedled the Princess into making him a
present of twenty millions,--a most extravagant gift.

"This is too much!" exclaimed the King; and he at once caused a letter to
be despatched to Mademoiselle and her lover, telling them that their
intimacy must cease, and that things must go no farther.

But the audacious Lauzun found means to suborn a well-meaning simpleton
of a priest, who married them secretly the very same day.

The King's indignation and resentment may well be imagined. He had his
captain of the guard arrested and sent as a prisoner to Pignerol.

On this occasion, M. de Lauzun complained bitterly of me; he invented the
most absurd tales about me, even saying that he had struck me in my own
apartments, after taunting me to my face with "our old intimacy."

That is false; he reproached me with nothing, for there was nothing to
reproach. Shortly after the Princess's grand scene, he came and begged
me to intercede on his behalf. I only made a sort of vague promise, and
he knew well enough that, in the great world, a vague promise is the same
as a refusal.

For more than six months I had to stanch the tears and assuage the grief
of Mademoiselle. So tiresome to me did this prove, that she alone
well-nigh sufficed to make me quit the Court.

Such sorrowing and chagrin made her lose the little beauty that still
remained to her; nothing seemed more incongruous and ridiculous than to
hear this elderly grand lady talking perpetually about "her dearest
darling, the prisoner."

At the time I write he is at Pignerol; his bad disposition is forever
getting him into trouble. She sends him lots of money unknown to the
King, who generally knows everything. All this money he squanders or
gambles away, and when funds are low, says, "The old lady will send us
some."

CHAPTER XXXVI.

Hyde, the Chancellor.--Misfortune Not Always Misfortune.--Prince
Comnenus.--The King at Petit-Bourg.--His Incognito.--Who M. de Vivonne
Really Was.

The castle of Petit-Bourg, of which the King