astly diverted by it,
and next morning, before we left Versailles, every man who had thrown
his hat away in the exuberance of his joy received from the queen the
gift of a handsome laced hat. So much for Gaston Cheverny's flinging
his away. He showed a steady and cheerful fortitude under his losses.
Besides the actual loss to him, whose fortune was already small, he
was deeply attached to his home and his belongings. He told me with a
rueful smile that only the fine gateway of the Manoir Cheverny had
been spared. There was no doubt in the minds of either of us that
Jacques Haret was the guilty one in these crimes.

CHAPTER XIX

THE HAPPIEST MAN ALIVE

Will it be believed that after the king had in February sent for Count
Saxe and other officers to Versailles to announce to them the war, we
were not actually on the march until August? There was a song the
soldiers sang on the sly during these months, when the king, having
said he would make war, seemed loath to begin:

Timide, imbecile, farouche,
Jamais Louis n'avait dit mot.

At last though, under those two tough old warriors, Marshal Villars
and Marshal, the Duke of Berwick, the French were on the march.
Marshal Villars went to Italy and the Duke of Berwick to the Rhine.
With the Duke of Berwick went Count Saxe's old friend, the Duc de
Noailles and Count Saxe himself, then camp marshal. The Duke of
Berwick was very great as a man and a soldier, and everybody knows the
high esteem in which he held Count Saxe--of which I will speak in its
true place.

I am ashamed to say what a figure the army made on its march to
Strasburg. One result of the camp at Radewitz, like that at Compiegne
some years before, was to make young officers believe that the great
game of war was a summer fete. Every captain must travel in his
chaise, and there were almost as many cooks and valets and gill-flirts
as soldiers on the road to Strasburg. To those who knew that stern old
soldier, the Duke of Berwick, it was a certainty, fixed in advance, as
to what would become of the chaises, the valets, the cooks and the
gill-flirts. Count Saxe knew "_ce diable anglais_" as Berwick was
called. About ten miles before reaching Strasburg he dismounted from
his chaise--for he, seduced by the bad example of others, rode in a
chaise--and marched the ten last miles with his regiment, that he
might get well soiled and dusty when presenting himself before th