Indeed I have a double title to write to you, in the first place, as one of your dutiful, tho’ unworthy, subjects, who formerly tasted of your liberality; and secondly, as you have done me the honour to take away my late wife, not only into your private embraces, but private councils. Poor soul! I little thought she would fall to your majesty’s share when I took my last farwel of her, or that a prince that had his choice of so many thousands, would accept of my sorry leavings. And therefore, I must confess, I am apt to be a little vain, as often as I reflect, that the greatest monarch in the universe and I are brother-stallions, and that the eldest son of the church, and the little _Scarron_ have fish’d in the same hole. Some sawcy fellows have had the impudence to tell me to my face, that Madam _Maintenon_ (for so, out of respect to your majesty, I must call her) is your lawful wife, and that you were clandestinely marry’d to her. I took them up roundly, as they deserv’d, and told them, I was sure it was a damn’d lie; for, said I to them, if my master was marry’d to her, as you pretend, she had broke his heart long ago, as well as she did mine; from whence I positively concluded, that she might be your mistress, but was none of your wife. Last week, as I was sitting with some of my acquaintance in a publick-house, after a great deal of impertinent chat about the affairs of the _Milanese_, and the intended siege of _Mantua_, the whole company fell a talking of your majesty, and what glorious exploits you had perform’d in your time. Why, gentlemen, says an ill-look’d rascal, who prov’d to be _Herostratus_, for _Pluto_’s sake let not the grand monarch run away with all your praises. I have done something memorable in my time too; ’twas I, who out of the _Gaiete de Cœur_, and to perpetuate my name, fir’d the famous temple of the _Ephesian Diana_, and in two hours consumed that magnificent structure which was two hundred years a building: therefore, gentlemen, lavish not away all your praises, I beseech you, upon one man, but allow others their share. Why, thou diminutive inconsiderable wretch said I, in a great passion to him, thou worthless idle _logger head_, thou _pigmy_ in sin, thou _Tom Thumb_ in iniquity, how dares such a puny insect as thou art, have the impudence to enter the lists with _Lewis le Grand_? thou valuest thy self upon firing a church, but how? when the mistress of the house, who was a midwife by profession, was gone out to assist _Olympias_, and deliver’d her of _Alexander_ the Great. ’Tis plain, thou hadst not the courage to do it when the goddess was present, and upon the spot; but what is this to what my royal master can boast of, that had destroyed a hundred and a hundred such foolish fabricks in his time, and bravely ordered them to be bombarded, when he knew the very God that made and redeemed him had taken up his _Quarters_ in ’em. Therefore turn out of the room, like a