The victory of Roucoux concluded the campaign of that year, and Favart and his company returned to Brussels, heartily thankful to be quit, for a time, of war's alarms. "I prefer," he wrote to his mother, "moderate profits with safety to a large fortune purchased by continual fear and danger." However, he had no reason to be dissatisfied with his winter season in the Belgian capital, which was indeed successful beyond his most sanguine anticipations, the profits at each performance averaging as much as six hundred livres. To add to his good fortune, he was able to rid himself of his rival Parmentier, who, finding that the Marshal had taken Favart definitely under his protection, and that all attempts to oust him were likely to prove abortive, retired in disgust, leaving the poet master of the field. The future now presented itself to Favart in the most smiling colours; but alas! the poor man was living all the while in a fool's paradise, from which he was soon destined to be very rudely ejected. * * * * * Though now in his fiftieth year, Maurice de Saxe was still as susceptible to feminine charms as in the days when he had wrought such havoc among the ladies of Lithuania and Courland. If the record of his gallantries did not equal those of his royal father, it was probably because his military occupations absorbed so large a portion of his time. His tastes, particularly where the theatre was concerned, were catholic. "Whom did he not love? To what actress or opera-girl's skirts was he not attached? All the actresses of his campaigns in Flanders succeeded one another in that inflammable heart and disputed there an ephemeral reign: Mlles. Darimattes, Fleury, Amand, Verrières,[124] Bline, Auguste, and Beaumenard. For the Saxon hero, the troupe which he caused to follow him was a seraglio, in which the last comers were the most honoured."[125] Upon the susceptible Marshal it was only to be expected that the fresh beauty and grace of Justine should make a favourable impression, nor was his admiration for the young lady by any means diminished by the fact that--to borrow his own curious expression--she was "possessed by the demon of conjugal love,"[126] and, therefore, unlikely to afford him an easy conquest. M. Léon Gozlan asserts that Justine had attracted Maurice's notice in Paris, and that his invitation to Favart to accompany him to Flanders was nothing but a pretext for getting the poet's wife into his power. Of this there is some doubt; but, on the other hand, there can be no question that, before the end of the year 1746, Maurice had fallen desperately in love with the young actress, and had determined to make her, _bon gré, mal gré_, his mistress.