women, and complimented the Chevalier de Grammont on his present. 'But
how is it,' she asked, 'that you do not even keep a footman, and that
one of the common runners in the street lights you home with a link?'

'Madame,' he answered, 'the Chevalier de Grammont hates pomp: my
link-boy is faithful and brave.' Then he told the Queen that he saw she
was unacquainted with the nation of link-boys, and related how that he
had, at one time, had one hundred and sixty around his chair at night,
and people had asked 'whose funeral it was? As for the parade of coaches
and footmen,' he added, 'I despise it. I have sometimes had five or six
_valets-de-chambre_, without a single footman in livery except my
chaplain.'

'How!' cried the Queen, laughing, 'a chaplain in livery? surely he was
not a priest.'

'_Pardon_, Madame, a priest, and the best dancer in the world of the
Biscayan gig.'

'Chevalier,' said the king, 'tell us the history of your chaplain
Poussatin.'

Then De Grammont related how, when he was with the great Condé, after
the campaign of Catalonia, he had seen among a company of Catalans, a
priest in a little black jacket, skipping and frisking: how Condé was
charmed, and how they recognized in him a Frenchman, and how he offered
himself to De Grammont for his chaplain. De Grammont had not much need,
he said, for a chaplain in his house, but he took the priest, who had
afterwards the honour of dancing before Anne of Austria, in Paris.