Let me say a few words about my father.  Our family in my grandfather’s time had become impoverished; and my father was early sent to the Court as page to Louis XIII.  It was very customary then for the sons of reduced gentlemen to accept this occupation.  The King was passionately fond of hunting, an amusement that was carried on with far less state, without that abundance of dogs, and followers, and convenience of all kinds which his successor introduced, and especially without roads through the forests.  My father, who noticed the impatience of the King at the delays that occurred in changing horses, thought of turning the head of the horse he brought towards the crupper of that which the King quitted.  By this means, without putting his feet to the ground, his Majesty, who was active, jumped from one horse to another.  He was so pleased that whenever he changed horses he asked for this same page.  From that time my father grew day by day in favour.  The King made him Chief Ecuyer, and in course of years bestowed other rewards upon him, created him Duke and peer of France, and gave him the Government of Blaye.  My father, much attached to the King, followed him in all his expeditions, several times commanded the cavalry of the army, was commander-in-chief of all the arrierebans of the kingdom, and acquired great reputation in the field for his valour and skill.  With Cardinal Richelieu he was intimate without sympathy, and more than once, but notably on the famous Day of the Dupes, rendered signal service to that minister.  My father used often to be startled out of his sleep in the middle of the night by a valet, with a taper in his hand, drawing the curtain—­having behind him the Cardinal de Richelieu, who would often take the taper and sit down upon the bed and exclaim that he was a lost man, and ask my father’s advice upon news that he had received or on quarrels he had had with the King.  When all Paris was in consternation at the success of the Spaniards, who had crossed the frontier, taken Corbie, and seized all the country as far as Compiegne, the King insisted on my father being present at the council which was then held.  The Cardinal de Richelieu maintained that the King should retreat beyond the Seine, and all the assembly seemed of that opinion.  But the King in a speech which lasted a quarter of an hour opposed this, and said that to retreat at such a moment would be to increase the general disorder.  Then turning to my father he ordered him to be prepared to depart for Corbie on the morrow, with as many of his men as he could get ready.  The histories and the memoirs of the time show that this bold step saved the state.  The Cardinal, great man as he was, trembled, until the first appearance of success, when he grew bold enough to join the King.  This is a specimen of the conduct of that weak King governed by that first minister to whom poets and historians have given the glory they have stripped from his master; as, for instance, all the works of the siege of Rochelle, and the invention and unheard-of success of the celebrated dyke, all solely due to the late King!