HE RETURNS TO THE COURT OF FRANCE--HIS ADVENTURES AT
THE SIEGE OF ARRAS--HIS REPLY TO CARDINAL MAZARIN
--HE IS BANISHED THE COURT.


The Chevalier de Grammont, upon his return to France, sustained, with the
greatest success, the reputation he had acquired abroad: alert in play,
active and vigilant in love; sometimes successful, and always feared, in
his intrigues; in war alike prepared for the events of good or ill
fortune; possessing an inexhaustible fund of pleasantry in the former,
and full of expedients and dexterity in the latter.

Zealously attached to the Prince de Conde from inclination, he was a
witness, and, if we may be allowed to say it, his companion, in the glory
he had acquired at the celebrated battles of Lens, Norlinguen, and
Fribourg; and the details he so frequently gave of them were far from
diminishing their lustre.

[Louis of Bourbon, Duke d'Enghien, afterwards, by the death of his
father in 1656, Prince de Conde. Of this great man Cardinal de Retz
says, "He was born a general, which never happened but to Caesar, to
Spinola, and to himself. He has equalled the first: he has
surpassed the second. Intrepidity is one of the least shining
strokes in his character. Nature had formed him with a mind as
great as his courage. Fortune, in setting him out in a time of
wars, has given this last a full extent to work in: his birth, or
rather his education, in a family devoted and enslaved to the court,
has kept the first within too straight bounds. He was not taught
time enough the great and general maxims which alone are able to
form men to think always consistently. He never had time to learn