[414] He had given some very witty answers—that, amongst others, made to the Regent, whom he had asked for an abbey for his nephew, the famous De Belsunce, bishop of Marseilles. It was some time after the plague, during which the prelate had behaved like a hero. Despite the promise made to Lauzun, the Regent forgot to include his relation in the distribution of benefices, and when Lauzun questioned him on the subject, remained silent and confused. Lauzun, with a great appearance of respect, said, “Monsieur, he will do better another time.”
[415] Saint-Simon, whose brother-in-law Lauzun had the good fortune to become towards the end of his life, by marrying at sixty-two years of age the daughter, aged sixteen, of the Marshal de Lorges, is more indulgent for his relation, whose meanness, however, he does not try to hide.
[416] Letter of Bussy-Rabutin, vol. viii. p. 265. of Monmerqué’s edition of the Lettres de Madame de Sévigné; Mémoires de Saint-Simon, vol. xiii. p. 83.
[417] Mémoires de Saint-Simon, vol. xiii. p. 74.—Letters from Louvois to Saint-Mars, October 14, November 15 and 22, 1672, March 16, and November 23, 1676.
[418] Saint-Mars only discovered the hole in the wall after the death of Fouquet:—Letter from Louvois to Saint-Mars, April 8, 1680.
[419] Mémoires de Saint-Simon, vol. xiii. p. 70.
[420] Souvenirs de Madame de Caylus.
[421] Racine, Fragments Historiques. Mémoires de Saint-Simon, vol. xiii. p. 69.
[422] Mémoires de Saint-Simon, Ibid.
[423] Mémoires de Saint-Simon, vol. xiii. p. 72. Segrais, a contemporary, adds Madame de Maintenon to these two undoubted authors of the second disgrace of Lauzun. (Segrais, Mémoires et Anecdotes.