'What is the matter?' cried the chevalier.

'Faith, chevalier,' answered Matta, 'I was dreaming that we had sent
away our _maitre d'hôtel_, and were resolved to live like our neighbours
for the rest of the campaign.'

'Poor fellow!' cried De Grammont. 'So, you are knocked down at once:
what would have become of you if you had been reduced to the situation I
was in at Lyons, four days before I came here? Come, I will tell you all
about it.'

'Begin a little farther back,' cried Matta, 'and tell me about the
manner in which you first paid your respects to Cardinal Richelieu. Lay
aside your pranks as a child, your genealogy, and all your ancestors
together; you cannot know anything about them.'

'Well,' replied De Grammont, 'it was my father's own fault that he was
not Henry IV.'s son: see what the Grammonts have lost by this
crossed-grained fellow! Faith, we might have walked before the Counts de
Vendôme at this very moment.'

Then he went on to relate how he had been sent to Pau, to the college,
to be brought up to the church, with an old servant to act both as his
valet and his guardian. How his head was too full of gaming to learn
Latin. How they gave him his rank at college, as the youth of quality,
when he did not deserve it; how he travelled up to Paris to his brother
to be polished, and went to court in the character of an abbé. 'Ah,
Matta, you know the kind of dress then in vogue. No, I would not change
my dress, but I consented to draw over it a cassock. I had the finest
head of hair in the world, well curled and powdered above my cassock,