The marshal--who at this time was not yet made a marshal--was, by his father, a Vignerot, and only on his grandmother's side a Richelieu. This did not, however, prevent him from taking for his first wife Mademoiselle de Noailles, and for his second Mademoiselle de Guise, the latter alliance connecting him with the imperial house of Austria, and making him cousin to the prince de Pont and the prince de Lixen. Now it fell out one day that the duc de Richelieu had an attack of colic, and therefore had not taken the usual pains with his toilet; it fell out, I say, that he returned to the camp with my grandfather, and went out hunting, covered with sweat and mud all over. The princes de Pont and de Lixen were hunting at the same time, and the duke, who was in haste to return home to change his clothes, passed by them at a gallop and saluted them. "Oh! oh!" said the prince de Lixen, "is that you, cousin? How muddy you are! But perhaps you are a little bit cleaner since you married my cousin." M. de Richelieu pulled up his horse and leapt to the ground, motioning to my grandfather to do the same, and he advanced to the prince de Lixen: "Sir," said he, "you did me the honour to address me." "Yes, M. le duc," replied the prince. "I am afraid I misunderstood the words you did me the honour to address to me. Will you have the goodness to repeat them to me exactly as you said them?" The prince de Lixen bowed his head in the affirmative, and repeated word for word the phrase he had uttered. It was so insolently done that there was no way out of it. M. de Richelieu bowed to the prince de Lixen and clapped his hand to his sword. The prince followed suit. The prince de Pont naturally was obliged to be his brother's second, and my grandfather Richelieu's. A minute later M. de Richelieu plunged his sword through the body of the prince de Lixen, who fell back stone dead into the arms of the prince de Pont.[1] Fifty-five years had gone by since this event. M. de Richelieu, the oldest of the marshals of France, had been in 1781 appointed president of the Tribunal of Affairs of Honour, in his eighty-fifth year. He would therefore be eighty-seven when the anecdote we are about to relate took place. My father would be twenty-two. My father was one night at the theatre of la Montansier in undress, in the box of a very beautiful Creole who was the rage at the time. Whether on account of the lady's immense popularity or because of his imperfect toilet, he kept at the back of the box. A musketeer, who had recognised the lady from the orchestra, opened the box door and, without in any way asking leave, seated himself by her and began to enter into conversation. "Pardon me, monsieur," said the lady, interrupting him at the first words he uttered, "but I think you are not sufficiently aware that I am not alone." "Who, then, is with you?" asked the musketeer. "Why, that gentleman, of course," replied the lady, indicating my father.