prowess; but I
shall at least have, on this occasion, the courage to despise the
slanderous slights of these presumptuous youths. Do not talk to me of
the submissions and regrets of your two sons, who are unworthy of you;
let them live as far away from me as possible; they do not deserve to
approach an honest man, such as their King."

The Prince de Turenne,

[The Prince de Turenne was in bad odour at Court ever since he had
separated Monseigneur from his young wife by exaggerating that Princess's
small failings.--MADAME DE MONTESPAN'S NOTE.]

son of the Duc de Bouillon, and Prince Eugene of Savoy, third or fourth
son of the Comtesse de Soissons (Olympe Mancini), had accompanied their
cousins De Conti on this knightly expedition; all these gentlemen
returned at the conclusion of the war, except Prince Eugene, a violent
enemy of the King.

This young Prince of the second branch, seeing his mother's disgrace
since the great affair of the poison, hated me mortally. He carried his
treachery so far as to attribute to me the misfortunes of Olympe, saying,
and publishing all over Paris, that I had incited accusers in order to be
able to deprive her forcibly of her superintendence. This post, which
had been sold to me for four hundred thousand francs, had been paid for
long since; that did not prevent Eugene from everywhere affirming the
contrary.

Since the flight or exile of his lady mother, he had taken it into his
head to dream of the episcopate, and to solicit Pere de la Chaise on the
subject. But the King, who does not like frivolous or absurd figures in
high offices, decided that a little man with a deformity would repel
rather than attract deference at a pinnacle of dignity of the priesthood.

Refused for the episcopate, M. de Soissons thought he might offer himself
as a colonel. His Majesty, who did not know the military ways of this
abbe, refused him anew, both as an abbe and as a hunchback, and as a
public libertine already degraded by his irregularities.

From all these refusals and mortifications there sprung his firm resolve
to quit France. He had been born there; he left all his family there
except his mother; he declared himself its undying enemy, and said
publicly in Germany that Louis XIV. would shed tears of blood for the
injury and the affront which he had offered him.

MM. de Conti, after the events in Hungary and at Vienna, returned to
France covered with laurels. They came to salute the King at V