of the footmen's hangers, drew it, and went to the
other aide to join M. de Turenne, whom I found with his eyes fixed on
something, but what I could not see. I asked him what it was, upon which
he pulled me by the sleeve, and said, with a low voice, "I will tell you,
but we must not frighten the ladies," who, by this time, screamed most
fearfully. Voiture began his Oremus, and prayed heartily. You, I
suppose, knew Madame de Choisy's shrill tone; Mademoiselle de Vendome was
counting her beads; Madame de Vendome would fain have confessed her sins
to the Bishop of Lisieux, who said to her, "Daughter, be of good cheer;
you are in the hands of God." At the same instant, the Comte do Brion
and all the lackeys were upon their knees very devoutly singing the
Litany of the Virgin Mary.

M. de Turenne drew his sword, and said to me, with the calm and
undisturbed air he commonly puts on when he calls for his dinner, or
gives battle, "Come, let us go and see who they are."

"Whom should we see?" said I, for I believed we had all lost our senses.

He answered, "I verily think they are devils."

When we had advanced five or six steps I began to see something which I
thought looked like a long procession of black phantoms. I was
frightened at first, because of the sudden reflection that I had often
wished to see a spirit, and that now, perhaps, I should pay for my
incredulity, or rather curiosity. M. de Turenne was all the while calm
and resolute. I made two or three leaps towards the procession, upon
which the company in the coach, thinking we were fighting with all the
devils, cried out most terribly; yet it is a question whether our company
was in a greater fright than the imaginary devils that put us into it,
who, it seems, were a parcel of barefooted reformed Augustine friars,
otherwise called the Black Capuchins, who, seeing two men advancing
towards them with drawn swords, one of them, detached from the
fraternity, cried out, "Gentlemen, we are poor, harmless friars, only
come to bathe in this river for our healths." M. de Turenne and I went
back to the coach ready to die with laughing at this adventure.

Upon the whole we could not help making this reflection, that what we
read in the lives of most people is false. We were both grossly
mistaken, I, for supposing him to be frightened; he, for thinking me calm
and undisturbed. Who, therefore, can write truth better than the man who
has experienced it? The President de Thou