able enemy, had left the capital in the best
condition and pitched outside Vienna, in a position from which he could
severely harass the besieging Turks.

He tormented them, he raided them, while he waited for the saving
reinforcements which were to be brought up by the King of Poland, and the
natural allies of the Empire. This succour arrived at last, and after
four or five combats, well directed and most bloody, they threw the
Ottomans into disorder. The Duc de Lorraine immortalised himself during
this brilliant campaign, which he finished by annihilating the Turks near
Barkan.

France had remained in a state of inaction in the midst of all these
great events. I saw the discomfiture of our ministers and the King when
the success of the Imperialists reached them. But the time had passed
when my affections and those of my master were akin. Free from
henceforth to follow the impulses of my conscience and of my sense of
justice, I rejoiced sincerely at the great qualities of the poor Duc de
Lorraine, and at the humiliation of the cruel Turks, who had been so
misled.

The elective princes of the Germanic Empire once more rallied round their
august head, and disavowed almost all their secret communications with
the Cabinet of Versailles. The Emperor, having escaped from these great
perils, addressed some noble and touching complaints to our monarch; and
Monseigneur was not elected King of the Romans,--a disappointment which
he hardly noticed, and by which he was very little disturbed.

CHAPTER XXVII.

The Prince of Orange.--The Orange Coach.--The Bowls of Oranges.--The
Orange Blossoms.--The Town of Orange.--Jesuits of Orange.--Revocation of
the Edict of Nantes.

The King, by the last peace, signed at Nimegue, had engaged to restore
the Principality of Orange to William, Stadtholder and Generalissimo of
the Dutch. This article was one of those which he had found most
repugnant to him, for nothing can be compared with the profound aversion
which the mere name inspired in the monarch. He pushed this hatred so
far that, having one day noticed from the heights of his balcony a superb
new equipage, of which the body was painted with orange-coloured varnish,
he sent and asked the name of the owner; and, on their reporting to him
that this coach belonged to a provincial intendant, a relative
of the Chancellor, his Majesty said, the same evening, to the
magistrate-minister: "Your relative ought to show more di