o in fact it was, and Puysieux received the cordon
bleu on the day the King had named. This fact is not important, but it
is amusing. It is altogether singular in connection with a prince as
serious and as imposing as Louis XIV.; and it is one of those little
Court anecdotes which are curious.

Here is another more important fact, the consequences of which are still
felt by the State. Pontchartrain, Secretary of State for the Navy, was
the plague of it, as of all those who were under his cruel dependence.
He was a man who, with some-amount of ability, was disagreeable and
pedantic to an excess; who loved evil for its own sake; who was jealous
even of his father; who was a cruel tyrant towards his wife, a woman all
docility and goodness; who was in one word a monster, whom the King kept
in office only because he feared him. An admiral was the abhorrence of
Pontchartrain, and an admiral who was an illegitimate son of the King,
he loathed. There was nothing, therefore, that he had not done during
the war to thwart the Comte de Toulouse; he laid some obstacles
everywhere in his path; he had tried to keep him out of the command of
the fleet, and failing this, had done everything to render the fleet
useless.

These were bold strokes against a person the King so much loved, but
Pontchartrain knew the weak side of the King; he knew how to balance the,
father against the master, to bring forward the admiral and set aside the
son. In this manner the Secretary of State was able to put obstacles in
the way of the Comte de Toulouse that threw him almost into despair, and
the Count could do little to defend himself. It was a well-known fact at
sea and in the ports where the ships touched, and it angered all the
fleet. Pontchartrain accordingly was abhorred there, while the Comte de
Toulouse, by his amiability and other good qualities, was adored.

At last, the annoyance he caused became so unendurable, that the Comte de
Toulouse, at the end of his cruise in the Mediterranean, returned to
Court and determined to expose the doings of Pontchartrain to the King.

The very day he had made up his mind to do this, and just before he
intended to have his interview with the King, Madame Pontchartrain,
casting aside her natural timidity and modesty, came to him, and with
tears in her eyes begged him not to bring about the ruin of her husband.
The Comte de Toulouse was softened. He admitted afterwards that he could
not resist the sweetness a