He begged me to get him a command in this army of Candia, wherein the
King had just permitted his own kinsmen to go and win laurels for
themselves. He was already a full colonel of dragoons, and one of the
captains of the guard. The King, who till then liked him well enough,
considered such a proposition indecent, and, gauging or not gauging his
intentions, he postponed until a later period these aspirations of Lauzun
to the post of prince or sovereign.




CHAPTER XXIII.

The Abbe d'Estrees.--Singular Offers of Service.--Madame de Montespan
Declines His Offer of Intercession at the Vatican.--He Revenges Himself
upon the King of Portugal.--Difference between a Fair Man and a Dark.


Since the reign of Gabrielle d'Estrees, who died just as she was about to
espouse her King, the D'Estrees family were treated at Court more with
conventional favour than with esteem. The first of that name was
lieutenant-general, destined to wield the baton of a French marshal, on
account of his ancestry as well as his own personal merit. The Abbe
d'Estrees passed for being in the Church what M. de Lauzun was in
society,--a man who always met with success, and who also was madly
ambitious.

While still very young, he had been appointed to the bishopric of Laon,
which, in conjunction with two splendid abbeys, brought him in a handsome