CKAIIACTEB OF M. LE PRINCE. 89

reminding Mm what he had promised to do. The King replied
& in confusion that he had thought better of it; that Haxcourt

was on bad terms with all the Ministers, and might, if admitted
to the Council, cause them much embarrassment; he preferred,
therefore, things to remain, as they were. This was said in a
manner that admitted of no reply. Madame de Maintenon felt
herself beaten.; Harcourt was in despair. M. de Beauvilliers
was quite re-established in the favour of the King. I pretended
jA to have known nothing of this affair, and innocently asked

many questions about it when all was over. I was happy to
the last degree that everything had turned out so welL

M. le Prince, who for more than two years had not appeared
at the Court, died at Paris a little after midnight on the night
between Easter Sunday and Monday, the last of March and first
of April, and in his seventy-sixth year. No man had ever more
ability of all kinds,—extending even to the arts and mechanics,
—more valour, and, when it pleased him, more discernment,
grace, politeness, and nobility. But then no man had ever
f before so many useless talents, so much genius of no avail, or

i an imagination so calculated to be a bugbear to itself and a

= plague to others. Abjectly and vilely servile even to lackeys,

he scrupled not to use the lowest and paltriest means to gain
i his ends. Unnatural son, cruel father, terrible husband, detest-

able master, pernicious neighbour; without friendship, without
I friends—incapable of having any—jealous, suspicious, ever rest-

i less, full of slyness and artifices to discover and to scrutinise all,

(in which he was unceasingly occupied, aided by an extreme
vivacity and a surprising penetration,) choleric aad headstrong
to excess even for trifles, difficult of access, never in accord
with himself, and keeping all around him in a tremble; to
conclude, impetuosity and avarice were his masters, which
monopolised him always. With all this he was a man difficult
to be proof against when he put in play the pleasing qualities
* he possessed.

Madame la Princesse, his wife, was his continual victim. She
was disgustingly ugly, virtuous, and foolish, a little hump-
backed, and stunk like a skunk, even from a* distance. All