I expressed my gratitude for the favour, and hinted that possibly the
relations of my father's first wife, the haughty and ancient house of La
Tremouille, might save the Bishop of Frejus from the pain of exerting
himself on my behalf.

"You are very much mistaken," answered Madame de Balzac: "priests point
the road to court as well as to Heaven; and warriors and nobles have as
little to do with the former as they have with the latter, the unlucky
Duc de Villars only excepted,--a man whose ill fortune is enough to
destroy all the laurels of France. /Ma foi/! I believe the poor Duke
might rival in luck that Italian poet who said, in a fit of despair,
that if he had been bred a hatter, men would have been born without
heads."

And Madame de Balzac chuckled over this joke, till, seeing that no
further news was to be gleaned from her, I made my adieu and my
departure.

Nothing could exceed the kindness manifested towards me by my father's
early connections. The circumstance of my accompanying Bolingbroke,
joined to my age, and an address which, if not animated nor gay, had not
been acquired without some youthful cultivation of the graces, gave me a
sort of /eclat/ as well as consideration. And Bolingbroke, who was only
jealous of superiors in power, and who had no equals in anything else,
added greatly to my reputation by his panegyrics.

Every one sought me; and the attention of society at Paris would, to
most, be worth a little trouble to repay. Perhaps, if I had liked it, I
might have been the rage; but that vanity was over. I contented myself