ecording. He
deliberately advanced into one of the breaches, and made a sketch of the
interior works of the fortification while the enemy's shot was tearing
up the ground around him. When the deed was reported to the king, he
interrupted the relation, saying, 'Don't tell me who did this, for I
have made De Gency a colonel for it;' so rapidly did Louis guess the
author of so daring a feat.

"From that hour, the young colonel's fortune was made. He was appointed
one of the gentlemen of the chamber to his Majesty, and distinguished by
almost daily marks of royal intimacy. His qualities eminently fitted him
for the tone of the society he lived in; he was a most witty converser,
a good musician, and had, moreover, a very handsome person,--gifts not
undervalued at Saint-Germain.

"Such were his social qualities; and so thoroughly did he understand
the king's humor, that even La Valliere herself saw the necessity of
retaining him at the Court, and, in fact, made a confidant of him
on several occasions of difficulty. Still, with all these favors
of fortune, when the object of envy to almost all the rest of the
household, Arnoud de Gency was suffering in his heart one of the most
trying afflictions that can befall a proud man so placed; he was in
actual poverty,--in want so pressing that all the efforts he could
make, all the contrivances he could practise, were barely sufficient
to prevent his misery being public. The taste for splendor in dress and
equipage which characterized the period had greatly injured his private
fortune, while the habit of high play, which Louis encouraged and liked
to see about him, completed his ruin. The salary of his appointments was
merely enough to maintain his daily expenditure; and thus was he, with
a breaking heart, obliged not only to mix in all the reckless gayety and
frivolity of that voluptuous Court, but, still more, tax his talents and
his energies for new themes of pleasure, fresh sources of amusement.

"Worn out at length by the long struggle between his secret sorrow and
his pride, he resolved to appeal to the king, and in a few words
tell his Majesty the straits to which he was reduced, and implore his
protection. To this he was impelled not solely on his own account, but
on that also of his only child, a boy of eight or nine years old, whose
mother died in giving him birth.

"An occasion soon presented itself. The king had given orders for a
hunting-party at St. Cloud; and at an