Thus, Sir, you may see with what zeal I appear in your majesty’s behalf, and that I omit no opportunity of magnifying your great exploits to the utmost of my poor abilities. At the same time I must freely own to you, that I have met with some rough-hewn sawcy rascals, that have stopp’d me in my full career, when I have been expatiating upon your praises, and have so dumbfounded me with their villainous objections, that I could not tell how to reply to them. Some few days ago it was my fortune to affirm, in a full assembly, that since the days of _Charlemagne_, _France_ was never bless’d with so renown’d, so victorious, and so puissant a prince as your majesty. You lame, gouty coxcomb, says a sawcy butter-box of a _Dutchman_ to me, don’t give yourself these airs in our company; _Lewis_, the greatest prince that _France_ ever had! Why, I tell thee, he has no more title to that crown, than I have to the _Great Mogul_’s; and _Lewis_ the thirteenth was no more his father than the Pope of _Rome_ is thine. I bless’d myself to hear the fellow deliver this with so serious a mien, when a countryman of his taking up the cudgels; ’Tis true, says he, your mighty monarch has no right to the throne he possesses; the late king had no hand in the begetting of him, but a lusty proper young fellow, one _le Grand_ by name, and an Apothecary by profession, was employ’d by cardinal _Mazarine_, who had prepar’d the queen’s conscience for the taking of such a dose, to strike an heir for _France_ out of her majesty’s body; by the same token that this scarlet agent of hell, got him fairly poison’d as soon as he had done the work, for fear of telling tales. If you ever read _Virgil_’s life written by _Donatus_, cries a third to me, you’ll find that _Augustus_ having rewarded that famous poet for some little services done him, with a parcel of loaves, had the curiosity once to enquire of him who he thought was his father? to which question of the emperor, _Virgil_ fairly answer’d, that he believ’d him to be a Baker’s son, because he still paid him in a Baker’s manufacture, _viz._ bread. And thus, were there no other proofs to confirm it, yet any one would swear that _Lewis le Grand_ is an Apothecary’s son, because he has acted all his life-time the part of an Apothecary.