Brought up in the country, in the most absolute ignorance, and having devoted his early years exclusively to the rude exercises of the chase, Beaufort, during the whole of his life, retained from this education of nature a coarse impress which made him the most really original personage of the courts of Anne of Austria and of Louis XIV. When, at the close of Louis XIII.’s reign, he appeared at the Louvre, in that court which was as yet far from being the most polished of Europe, he was not long in shocking even the least squeamish, and in opposing himself to the most legitimate requirements. His athletic strength, of which he willingly made a display, his characteristic and expressive features, the intemperate animation of his gestures, his affected habit of always keeping his hand on his hip, the tone of his voice, everything to his moustaches even, curled up out of bravado, contributed to give him the most provoking appearance. The rusticity of his manners was equalled only by the coarseness of his speech. He had not even received the usual education of the middle classes; and wanting sufficient discernment to compensate by observation for his complete ignorance, he would, when speaking, mix up in the strangest manner possible hunting terms, which were very familiar to him, with court expressions, which he used without hardly understanding them.[174] Cynical by habit, affected through a desire of imitating others, he had formed for himself a language “which,” the Cardinal de Retz says, “would have spoilt even Cato’s good sense.”[175] This jargon ended by rendering ridiculous one whose appearance alone was already displeasing. But he took his revenge in the army, where these defects were less apparent, and where he had opportunities for displaying his manly qualities. Careless of every danger, and even of a reckless courage, capable of enduring the most excessive fatigue, familiar with all the exercises of the body, he ceased to make people laugh at him, excited their admiration at the sieges of Corbie, Hesdin, and Arras, and when he returned to the court, was preceded by a reputation for bravery which rallied around him a portion of his detractors. People shut their eyes to his eccentricities, and were better disposed to appreciate his manly frankness and probity. Accordingly, when, on the eve of Louis XIII.’s death, Anne of Austria was afraid lest the Duke d’Orléans or the Prince de Condé should have the Dauphin and the Duke d’Anjou carried off, it was to the custody of Beaufort, as “the most honest man in France,”[176] that she confided her two sons.