It is no longer the question of a prince of whose very birth we are ignorant. The present one actually existed, and such interest as he inspires from the moment he comes into the world he owes to her who gave him birth. He is the son of that La Vallière, equally touching in her heroic resistance to the inclination which impels her towards Louis XIV., and in her yielding, whom one esteems even when she succumbs, and whom one admires when she rises again to flee from the peril; who, long virtuous, always upright and disinterested, lives entirely absorbed in her passion, then takes refuge in penitence, and powerful without having desired it; ignorant or careless of her influence, strong in her very weakness, subjugates without art and without study the most imperious of kings; who, after having charmed all her contemporaries by her sweet and simple grace, and passed from the torments of a love unceasingly combated to the voluntary rigours of an expiation courageously submitted to for thirty years, has remained the most pleasing and most interesting character of this great reign, and will seduce even the most remote posterity. Louis de Bourbon, Count de Vermandois, inherited his mother’s grace. He was tall and well made, and, like her, instinctively possessed that gift of pleasing which is never so engaging as when all about it is natural and nothing appears to depend upon art. Good and liberal, he had ways of obliging that were peculiar to himself,[118] and the most sensitive of men could not feel offended at his kindnesses. With such as these, when he wished to aid them, he made bets which he was certain to lose, or he sent them money by a hand which remained unknown. He was suspected of acts of generosity, which he never acknowledged himself the author of, and those whom he obliged had their necessities relieved without being required to testify their gratitude. His proud bearing and the air of supreme distinction which he inherited from his royal father, drew attention towards him still more than his high origin. To these outward charms, to these sentiments of exquisite delicacy and natural kindliness, which attached to him the soldier as much as the officer, Vermandois united a ready wit, a well-proved courage, a lively wish to distinguish himself, and to merit by splendid achievements the high dignity[119] to which, at the age of two years, he had been raised by the affection and pride of Louis XIV. Whilst still very young, and already in the midst of the army of Flanders, he had concealed a severe illness in order not to miss the noble rendezvous of an attack.[120] Like many of those destined to die prematurely, and who appear to foresee it, Vermandois hastened as it were through life, and seemed to strive, in endeavouring to render himself early illustrious, to anticipate the blow that was about to strike him. But sufficient time to attain glory was to fail him, and it was his destiny to leave behind