or
a disorder they thought they could cure.

According to what La Roche, the confidential servant of Madam de
Luxembourg, wrote to me relative to what had happened, it is by this
cruel and memorable example that the miseries of greatness are to be
deplored.

The loss of this good nobleman afflicted me the more, as he was the only
real friend I had in France, and the mildness of his character was such
as to make me quite forget his rank, and attach myself to him as his
equal. Our connection was not broken off on account of my having quitted
the kingdom; he continued to write to me as usual.

I nevertheless thought I perceived that absence, or my misfortune, had
cooled his affection for me. It is difficult to a courtier to preserve
the same attachment to a person whom he knows to be in disgrace with
courts. I moreover suspected the great ascendancy Madam de Luxembourg
had over his mind, had been unfavorable to me, and that she had taken
advantage of our separation to injure me in his esteem. For her part,
notwithstanding a few affected marks of regard, which daily became less
frequent, she less concealed the change in her friendship. She wrote to
me four or five times into Switzerland, after which she never wrote to me
again, and nothing but my prejudice, confidence and blindness, could have
prevented my discovering in her something more than a coolness towards
me.

Guy the bookseller, partner with Duchesne, who, after I had left
Montmorency, frequently went to the hotel de Luxembourg, wrote to me that
my name was in the will of the marechal. There was nothing in this
either incredible or extraordinary, on which account I had no doubt of
the truth of the information. I deliberated within myself whether or not
I should receive the legacy. Everything well considered, I determined to
accept it, whatever it might be, and to do that honor to the memory of an
honest man, who, in a rank in which friendship is seldom found, had had a
real one for me. I had not this duty to fulfill. I heard no more of the
legacy, whether it were true or false; and in truth I should have felt
some pain in offending against one of the great maxims of my system of
morality, in profiting by anything at the death of a person whom I had
once held dear. During the last illness of our friend Mussard, Leneips
proposed to me to take advantage of the grateful sense he expressed for
our cares, to insinuate to him dispositions in our favor. "Ah