About this time General Wall,[368] a true friend to the union of England and Spain, finding the French interest daily making greater progress at Madrid, desired leave to resign on pretence of failure of his eyesight. Grimaldi[369] was immediately ordered home from Paris to succeed him; a man devoted to France. To that Court Lord Hertford set out on the 13th of October, and Monsieur de Guerchy arrived thence. The Comte de Guerchy[370] was an amiable soldier; not to be named for parts, but far better qualified for his situation than his own Court believed, having a good knowledge of the world, a perpetual attention to his employment, consummate discretion, much natural ease in his behaviour, with either no impertinence, or with thorough mastery of it, and a complaisance so properly applied that he was agreeable to all parties, and yet always well with the reigning ministry here. It gave him a ridicule at home, that he was enslaved to a penurious and deformed wife; but that dominion of Madame de Guerchy was his greatest felicity. She had an excellent understanding, and a talent for learning the tempers, humours, and connections of England; her constant application to which, and the necessary curiosity in consequence, were concealed by the natural coldness and reserve of her disposition. Nor did her attention to their fortune ever disgrace her husband, nor throw even an air of economy on his table. At Paris her devotion and domestic retirement had passed for insipid virtues that prevented her good sense from being so much as suspected. At the Count’s first audience he told the King, with pleasant candour, _that it was a proof of his master’s intentions to preserve the peace, that he was sent over, who was no man of talents or intrigue_.