Where he came, all was sunshine, yet there breathed not a colder, graver man than the Calvinist Turenne:  modest, serious, somewhat hard, he gave the young nobility who served under him no quarter in their shortcomings; but a word, a look, from De Grammont could make him, malgre lui, unbend.  The gay chevalier’s white charger’s prancing, its gallant rider foremost in every peril, were not forgotten in after-times, when De Grammont, in extreme old age, chatted over the achievements and pleasures of his youth.

Amongst those who courted his society in Turenne’s army was Matta, a soldier of simple manners, hard habits, and handsome person, joined to a candid, honest nature.  He soon persuaded De Grammont to share his quarters, and there they gave splendid entertainments, which, Frenchman-like, De Grammont paid for out of the successes of the gaming-tables.  But chances were against them; the two officers were at the mercy of their maitre d’hotel, who asked for money.  One day, when De Grammont came home sooner than usual, he found Matta fast asleep.  Whilst De Grammont stood looking at him, he awoke, and burst into a violent fit of laughter.

‘What is the matter?’ cried the chevalier.

‘Faith, chevalier,’ answered Matta, ’I was dreaming that we had sent away our maitre d’hotel, and were resolved to live like our neighbours for the rest of the campaign.’

‘Poor fellow!’ cried De Grammont.  ’So, you are knocked down at once:  what would have become of you if you had been reduced to the situation I was in at Lyons, four days before I came here?  Come, I will tell you all about it.’

‘Begin a little farther back,’ cried Matta, ’and tell me about the manner in which you first paid your respects to Cardinal Richelieu.  Lay aside your pranks as a child, your genealogy, and all your ancestors together; you cannot know anything about them.’

‘Well,’ replied De Grammont, ’it was my father’s own fault that he was not Henry IV.’s son:  see what the Grammonts have lost by this crossed-grained fellow!  Faith, we might have walked before the Counts de Vendome at this very moment.’

Then he went on to relate how he had been sent to Pau, to the college, to be brought up to the church, with an old servant to act both as his valet and his guardian.  How his head was too full of gaming to learn Latin.  How they gave him his rank at college, as the youth of quality, when he did not deserve it; how he travelled up to Paris to his brother to be polished, and went to court in the character of an abbe.  ’Ah, Matta, you know the kind of dress then in vogue.  No, I would not change my dress, but I consented to draw over it a cassock.  I had the finest head of hair in the world, well curled and powdered above my cassock, and below were my white buskins and spurs.’

Even Richelieu, that hypocrite, he went on to relate, could not help laughing at the parti-coloured costume, sacerdotal above, soldier-like below; but the cardinal was greatly offended—­not with the absence of decorum, but with the dangerous wit, that could laugh in public at the cowl and shaven crown, points which constituted the greatest portion of Richelieu’s sanctity.