[173] “Several persons here wish to wager,” wrote Guy-Patin, September 26, 1669, “that M. de Beaufort is not dead. O utinam!” And in another letter, January 14, 1670: “It is said that M. de Vivonne has, by commission, the office of Vice-Admiral of France for twenty years; but there are still those who insist that M. de Beaufort is not dead, and that he is only a prisoner.”
[174] Mémoires de la Duchesse de Nemours, vol. xxxiv.; Mémoires de Brienne, and of Conrat, Montglat, and of La Rochefoucauld. “He formed,” says the Duchess de Nemours, “a kind of jargon of words so vulgar or so badly arranged, that it rendered him ridiculous to everybody, although these words, which he arranged so badly, would perhaps have appeared very good if he had known how to have arranged them better, being bad only in the places where he put them.”
[175] Mémoires du Cardinal de Retz, p. 9.
[176] It was thus that she then designated him.
[177] The Queen’s party.—Trans.
[178] He was imprisoned there in 1645, and escaped in 1649. It was referring to this escape that Condé, incarcerated in his turn at Vincennes, on being recommended the Imitation of Jesus Christ in order to beguile his captivity, answered that he preferred the Imitation of the Duke de Beaufort.
[179] It is known that he one day asked President Bellièvre if he would not change the face of affairs by giving a box on the ears to the Duke d’Elbœuf? “I do not think,” answered the magistrate, in a grave tone, “that would change anything except the face of the Duke d’Elbœuf.”
[180] Année Littéraire: Letter of Lagrange-Chancel to M. Fréron on the subject of the Man with the Iron Mask.
[181] Art de Vérifier les Dates, vol. vi. pp. 273 and 277.
[182] Œuvres de Louis XIV., vol. v. p. 388 et seq.