divorce, and in conducting a correspondence of the most delicate
character with the Queen, I lost sight of my player--insomuch,
that I scarcely knew whether he still formed part of my suite or
not.

My attention was presently recalled to him, however, in a rather
remarkable manner. One morning Don Antonio d'Evora, Secretary to
the Spanish Embassy, and a brother of that d'Evora who commanded
the Spanish Foot at Paris in '94, called on me at the Arsenal, to
which I had just removed, and desired to see me. I bade them
admit him; but as my secretaries were at the time at work with
me, I left them and received him in the garden--supposing that
he wished to speak to me, about the affair of Saluces, and
preferring, like the King my master, to talk of matters of State
in the open air.

However, I was mistaken. Don Antonio said nothing about Savoy,
but after the usual preliminaries, which a Spaniard never omits,
plunged into a long harangue upon the comity which, now that
peace reigned, should exist between the two nations. For some
time I waited patiently to learn what he would be at; but he
seemed to be lost in his own eloquence, and at last I took him
up.

"All this is very well, M. d'Evora," I said. "I quite agree with
you that the times are changed, that amity is not the same thing
as war, and that a grain of sand in the eye is unpleasant," for
he had said all of these things. "But I fail, being a plain man
and no diplomatist, to see what you want me to do."