dition of the troops and
their officers, without money and without pay. This was new language in
the mouth of Villars, who hitherto had owed all his success to the
smiling, rose-tinted account he had given of everything. It was the
frequency and the hardihood of his falsehoods in this respect that made
the King and Madame de Maintenon look upon him as their sole resource;
for he never said anything disagreeable, and never found difficulties
anywhere. Now that he had raised this fatal curtain, the aspect appeared
so hideous to them, that they found it easier to fly into a rage than to
reply. From that moment they began to regard Villars with other eyes.
Finding that he spoke now the language which everybody spoke, they began
to look upon him as the world had always looked upon him, to find him
ridiculous, silly, impudent, lying, insupportable; to reproach themselves
with having elevated him from nothing, so rapidly and so enormously; they
began to shun him, to put him aside, to make him perceive what they
thought, and to let others perceive it also.

Villars in his turn was frightened. He saw the prospect of losing what
he had gained, and of sinking into hopeless disgrace. With the
effrontery that was natural to him, he returned therefore to his usual
flatteries, artifices, and deceits; laughed at all dangers and
inconveniences, as having resources in himself against everything!
The coarseness of this variation was as plain as possible; but the
difficulty of choosing another general was equally plain, and Villars
thus got out of the quagmire. He set forth for the frontier, therefore,
in his coach, and travelling easy stages, on account of his wound,
arrived in due time at the army.

Neither Prince Eugene nor the Duke of Marlborough wished for peace; their
object was, the first, from personal vengeance against the King, and a
desire to obtain a still greater reputation; the second, to get rich, for
ambition was the prominent passion of one, and avarice of the other--
their object was, I say, to enter France, and, profiting by the extreme
weakness and straitened state of our troops and of our places, to push
their conquests as far as possible.

As for the King, stung by his continual losses, he wished passionately
for nothing so much as a victory, which should disturb the plans of the
enemies, and deliver him from the necessity of continuing the sad and
shameful negotiations for peace he had set an foot at Gertruydemberg