as proper for you to engage in as for me, but if, for
argument's sake, it were not, I am sure it is for your interest that I
should embrace it, for you will by that means have more time to make your
own terms with the Court before the peace is concluded, and after the
peace Mazarin will in such case be obliged to have more regard for all
those gentlemen whose reunion with me it will be to his interest to
prevent."

M. de Bouillon was so convinced of the justice of my reasoning that he
told me, when we were by ourselves, that he had, as well as myself,
thought of my expedient as soon as he received the news of the army
deserting M. de Turenne, that he could still improve it, as the Spaniards
would not fail to relish it, and that he had been on the point several
times one day to confer about it with me; but that his wife had conjured
him with prayers and tears to speak no more of the matter, but to come to
terms with the Court, or else to engage himself with the Spaniards. "I
know," said he, "you are not for the second arrangement; pray lend me
your good offices to compass the first." I assured him that all my best
offices and interests were entirely at his service to facilitate his
agreement with the Court, and that he might freely make use of my name
and reputation for that purpose.

In fine, we agreed on every point. M. de Bouillon undertook to make the
proposition palatable to the Spaniards, provided we would promise never
to let them know that it was concerted among ourselves beforehand, and we
never questioned but that we could persuade M. de Longueville to accept
it, for men of irresolution are apt to catch at all overtures which lead
them two ways, and consequently press them to no choice.

I had almost forgotten to tell you what M. de Bouillon said to me in
private as we were going from the conference. "I am sure," said he,
"that you will not blame me for not exposing a wife whom I dearly love
and eight children whom she loves more than herself to the hazards which
you run, and which I could run with you were I a single man."

I was very much affected by the tender sentiments of M. de Bouillon and
the confidence he placed in me, and assured him I was so far from blaming
him that I esteemed him the more, and that his tenderness for his lady,
which he was pleased to call his weakness, was indeed what politics
condemned but ethics highly justified, because it betokened an honest
heart, which is much superior