underhand
deeds.

He was threatened openly, and his numerous artifices and wiles were of
no use to him. In one day, and almost without a struggle, he was
precipitated from that height to which he had been raised by the blind
love of the old king. His fall was heavy, and above all disgraceful; he
retired mutilated, abandoning the regency to his rival, and only
preserving, out of all the favors accumulated upon him, the
superintendence of the royal education, the command of the artillery,
and the precedence over the dukes and peers.

The decree, which had just passed the parliament, struck the old court
and all attached to it. Letellier did not wait to be exiled. Madame de
Maintenon took refuge at Saint Cyr, and Monsieur le Duc de Maine shut
himself up in the beautiful town of Sceaux, to finish his translation of
Lucrece.

The Chevalier d'Harmental saw, as a passive spectator, these different
intrigues, waiting till they should assume a character which would
permit him to take part in them. If there had been an open and armed
contest, he would have taken that side to which gratitude called him.
Too young and too chaste, if we may say so, in politics, to turn with
the wind of fortune, he remained faithful to the memory of the old king,
and to the ruins of the old court.

His absence from the Palais Royal, round which hovered all those who
wished to take a place in the political sky, was interpreted as
opposition; and one morning, as he had received the brevet which gave
him a regiment, he received the decree which took it from him.

D'Harmental had the ambition of his age. The only career open to a
gentleman was that of arms. His debut had been brilliant, and the blow
which at five-and-twenty took from him his hopes for the future was
profoundly painful.

He ran to Monsieur de Villars, in whom he had found so warm a
protector. The marshal received him with the coldness of a man who not
only wishes to forget the past, but also to see it forgotten.

D'Harmental understood that the old courtier was about to change his
skin, and retired discreetly. Though the age was essentially that of
egotism, the chevalier's first experience of it was bitter to him; but
he was at that happy time of life when a disappointed ambition is rarely
a deep or lasting grief.

Ambition is the passion of those who have no other, and the chevalier
had all those proper to five-and-twenty years of age; besides, the
spirit of the times did not