was presented by the Duke de Vendôme, under whom he had fought, to Louis XIV., who received him with some commonplace remark; to which the old crippled soldier replied rudely, "If in quitting the Colours he had come to Court payer quelque catin he would have received more honour and less words.", Vendôme was so scared at his audacity, that he said, "Henceforth, Riquetti, I will present you to the enemy, and never again to the king."
The son of this man was Victor de Riquetti, who called himself "l'Ami des Hommes," a fantastic hodgepodge of contradictions. He was a philanthropist and a despot, a feudalist, but also a reformer, a professed friend of mankind, but a tyrant in his own family. He hated superstition, but scoffed at "la canaille philosophique." Separated from his wife, he was engaged in lawsuits with her for years, which published to all Provence the scandals of the domestic hearth of the House of Mirabeau. The eldest son of this man was Gabriel Honoré, the great orator, and the youngest daughter was Louise, Marchioness de Grasse-Cabris. The feudal castle of the Cabris is on the way to Draguignan. Cabris occupies a conical hill in a dreary limestone district, where the soil is so sparse that even the olive cannot flourish there—it exists, that is all. The place is supplied with water from cisterns that receive the rain from the roofs. Honoré was disfigured by smallpox at the age of three, and he retained thenceforth an extraordinary hideousness of aspect which struck his contemporaries, but which does not seem in the slightest to have impeded his success with women. His father declared that physically and morally he was a monster. The romance of his life begins when he
