"Is it thus you begin?" said Matta. "Pray give us your history a little
further back. The most minute particulars of a life like yours are
worthy of relation; but above all, the manner in which you first paid
your respects to Cardinal Richelieu: I have often laughed at it.
However, you may pass over the unlucky pranks of your infancy, your
genealogy, name and quality of your ancestors, for that is a subject
with which you must be utterly unacquainted."

"Pooh!" said the Chevalier; "you think that all the world is as
ignorant as yourself; you think that I am a stranger to the Mendores and
the Corisandes. So, perhaps I don't know that it was my father's own
fault that he was not the son of Henry IV. The king would by all means
have acknowledged him for his son, but the traitor would never consent
to it. See what the Grammonts would have been now, but for this
cross-grained fellow! They would have had precedence of the Caesars
de Vendome. You may laugh if you like, yet it is as true as the gospel:
but let us come to the point.

"I was sent to the college of Pau, with the intention of being brought
up to the church; but as I had quite different views, I made no manner
of improvement: gaming was so much in my head, that both my tutor and the
master lost their labour in endeavouring to teach me Latin. Old Brinon,
who served me both as valet-de-chambre and governor, in vain threatened
to acquaint my mother. I only studied when I pleased, that is to say,
seldom or never: however, they treated me as is customary with scholars
of my quality; I was raised to all the dignities of the forms, without
having merited them, and left college nearly in the same state in which I
entered it; nevertheless, I was thought to have more knowledge than was
requisite for the abbacy which my brother had solicited for me. He had
just married the niece of a minister, to whom every one cringed: he was