Beaufort was not the least assiduous in giving satisfaction to the absolute monarch. Little formed for command, for which an extreme impetuosity rendered him unsuited, he received very humbly the severe reprimands of Louis XIV. and Colbert, and supported the yoke of the master as docilely as he was harsh and imperious to his own officers.[182] If he was always menacing the latter with ill-treatment and with having them thrown into the sea, he submitted, in his naval expeditions, to the control and almost to the rule of the Intendant placed at his side by Colbert.[183] Nothing in him, then, was dangerous to the court: neither his character, for his subordinates alone experienced its violence; nor his talents, which were almost nugatory; nor his pretensions, which had become very much reduced; nor his popularity, which scarcely extended beyond the boundaries of his kingdom of the _halles_. More than that, he had, in the eyes of the King, the merit of belonging, through his father,[184] to those illegitimate princes whom Louis XIV. was constantly to favour--at first from political interest, with the view of opposing them to the legitimate heirs of the great families; then from paternal affection, when his own _amours_ had quickly increased their number--and to whom, from a pride more and more immoderate, he was to accord successively precedence over the peers, then the rank of royal princes, and, lastly, to the shame of the whole kingdom, rights to the throne of France. One cannot understand, then, for what motive Louis XIV. would have sought to have got rid of a prince too unimportant to excite his jealousy, too submissive for a revolt to be feared from him, and who, the son of a bastard, was preparing for and justifying by his example the early and more and more scandalous elevation of the illegitimate offspring of the great King. Previous to the expedition to Candia, whither, according to Lagrange-Chancel, and those who share his opinion,[185] Beaufort was sent in order that he might be carried off and afterwards condemned to perpetual imprisonment, was there any act in the Admiral’s naval career, by which he had entered into a state of rebellion against the court? Was there anything of the kind in the expedition of 1664, when, in spite of the opinions of his lieutenants, some of whom wished to attack Bona first, others Boujeiah,[186] Beaufort, adhering too strictly to Louis XIV.’s detailed instructions, directed an attack on Gigery, of which he possessed himself prematurely, and compromised the results of the campaign by a scrupulous obedience to orders given at a distance, and which he ought to have been bold enough to have disregarded? Was there anything in 1666, when he was charged to command the escort of the new Queen of Portugal,[187] and when, in spite of his ardour and of a noble desire to hasten to an encounter with the English, he agreed, so as to obey orders, to remain immovable in the waters of the Tagus?