o deal the cards. Cameran lost
fifteen hundred pistoles and paid them the next morning. Matta, severely
reprimanded for his dangerous impertinence, confessed that a brush
between the opposing forces outside would have been a diverting
conclusion to the evening.

_II.--A Complete Education_

"Tell me the story of your education," said Matta one evening, as the
intimacy of the two friends advanced. "The most trifling particulars of
a life like yours must be well worth knowing. But don't begin with an
enumeration of your ancestors, for I know you are wholly ignorant of
their name and rank."

"What poor jest is that?" replied the count. "Not all the world is as
ignorant as you. It was owing to my father's own choice that he was not
son of King Henry IV. His majesty desired nothing more than to recognise
him, but my treacherous parent was obdurate to the end. Think how the De
Grammonts would have stood if he had only kept to the truth. I see you
laugh, but it's as true as the Gospel.

"But to come to facts. I was sent to college with a view to the Church,
but as I had other views, I profited little. I was so fond of gaming
that my teachers lost their Latin in trying to teach it to me. Old
Brinon, who accompanied me as servant and governor, threatened me with
my mother's anger, but I rarely listened. I left college very much as I
entered it, though they considered that I knew enough for the living
which my brother had procured for me.

"He had just married the niece of the great Richelieu, to whom he wished
to present me. I arrived in Paris, and after enjoying for a few days the
run of the town in order to lose my rusticity, I put on a cassock to
appear at court in a clerical character. But my hair was well powdered
and dressed, my white boots and gilt spurs showed below, and the
cardinal was offended at what he took to be a slight on the tonsure.

"The costume, a compromise between Rome and the army, delighted the
court, but my brother pointed out that the time had come to choose
between them. 'On the one hand,' he said, 'by declaring for the Church
you may have great possessions and a life of idleness; on the other
hand, a soldier's life offers you slender pay, broken arms and legs, the
court's ingratitude, and at length, perhaps, the rank of camp-marshal,
with a glass eye and a wooden leg. Choose.'

"'I very well know,' I replied, 'that these two careers cannot be
compared as regards the comfort and convenience