e assertion. If you are in holy orders I will recommend you to the
Archbishop of Rouen, who will find you a place suitable for you. Are you
in holy orders?"

"No, madame," replied the ex-Jesuit; I was merely a lay brother."

"In that case," replied the Marquise, "we can offer you a position as
schoolmaster; and the Jesuit Fathers, if they have any esteem for you,
should have rendered you this service, for they have the power to do
that, and more."

BOOK 7.

CHAPTER XXXVII

The King Takes Luxembourg Because It Is His Will.--Devastation of the
Electorate of Treves.--The Marquis de Louvois.--His Portrait.--The
Marvels Which He Worked.--The Le Tellier and the Mortemart.--The King
Destines De Mortemart to a Colbert.--How One Manages Not to Bow.--The
Dragonades.--A Necessary Man.--Money Makes Fat.--Meudon.--The Horoscope.

This journey to Flanders did not keep the King long away from his
capital. And, withal, he made two fine and rich conquests, short as the
space of time was. The important town of Luxembourg was necessary to
him. He wanted it. The Marechal de Crequi invested this place with an
army of thirty thousand men, and made himself master of it at the end of
a week.

Immediately after the King marched to the Electorate of Treves, which had
belonged, he said, to the former kingdom of Austrasia. He had no trouble
in mastering it, almost all the imperial forces being in Hungary,
Austria, and in those cantons where the Ottomans had called for them. The
town of Treves humbly recognised the King of France as its lord and
suzerain. Its fine fortifications were levelled at once, and our
victories were, unhappily, responsible for the firing, pillage, and
devastation of almost the whole Electorate. For the Duke of Crequi,
faithful executor of the orders of Louvois, imagined that a sovereign is
only obeyed when he proves himself stern and inflexible.

In the first years of my favour, the Marquis de Louvois enjoyed my entire
confidence, and, I must admit, my highest esteem. Independently of his
manners, which are, when he wishes, those of the utmost amiability, I
remarked in him an industrious and indefatigable minister, an intelligent
man, as well instructed in the mass as in details; a mind fertile in
resources, means, and expedients; an administrator, a jurist, a
theologian, a man of letters and of affairs, an artist, an agriculturist,
a soldier.

Loving pleasure, yet knowing how to despise it in favou