e consoles himself
for his banishment. I know you well, my dear Chevalier: if you take it
into your head to seduce a lady, or to supplant a lover, your gains at
play will by no means suffice for presents and for bribes: no, let play
be as productive to you as it can be, you will never gain so much by it
as you will lose by love, if you yield to it.

"You are in possession of a thousand splendid qualifications which
distinguish you here: generous, benevolent, elegant, and polite; and for
your engaging wit, inimitable. Upon a strict examination, perhaps, all
this would not be found literally true; but these are brilliant marks;
and since it is granted that you possess them, do not show yourself here
in any other light: for, in love, if your manner of paying your addresses
can be so denominated, you do not in the least resemble the picture I
have just now drawn."

"My little philosophical monitor," said the Chevalier de Grammont, "you
talk here as if you were the Cato of Normandy." "Do I say anything
untrue?" replied Saint Evremond: "Is it not a fact, that as soon as a
woman pleases you, your first care is to find out whether she has any
other lover, and your second how to plague her; for the gaining her
affection is the last thing in your thoughts. You seldom engage in
intrigues, but to disturb the happiness of others: a mistress who has no
lovers would have no charms for you, and if she has, she would be
invaluable. Do not all the places through which you have passed furnish
me with a thousand examples? Shall I mention your coup d'essai at Turin?
the trick you played at Fontainebleau, where you robbed the Princess
Palatine's courier upon the highway? and for what purpose was this fine
exploit, but to put you in possession of some proofs of her affection for
another, in order to give her uneasiness and confusion by reproaches and
menaces, which you had no right to use?

"Who but yourself ever took it into his head to place himself in ambush
upon the stairs, to disturb a man in an intrigue, and to pull him back by
the leg when he was half way up to his mistress's chamber? yet did not
you use your friend the Duke of Buckingham in this manner, when he was
stealing at night to------although you were not in the least his rival?
How many spies did not you send out after d'Olonne?

[Mademoiselle de la Loupe, who is mentioned in De Retz's Memoirs,
vol. iii., p. 95. She married the Count d'Olonne, and became
famous fo