2nd. Walking in the garden this evening with Sir G. Carteret and
Sir J. Minnes, Sir G. Carteret told us with great content how
like a stage-player my Lord Digby spoke yesterday, pointing to
his head as my Lord did, and saying, "First, for his head," says
Sir G. Carteret, "I know when a calfe's head would have done
better by half: for his heart and his sword, I have nothing to
say to them." He told us that for certain his head cost the late
King his, for it was he that broke off the treaty at Uxbridge.
He told us also how great a man he was raised from a private
gentleman in France by Monsieur Grandmont, and afterwards by the
Cardinal, who raised him to be a Lieutenant-generall, and then
higher; and entrusted by the Cardinal when he was banished out of
France with great matters, and recommended by him to the Queene
as a man to be trusted and ruled by: yet when he come to have
some power over the Queene, he begun to dissuade her from her
opinion of the Cardinal; which she said nothing to till the
Cardinal [Cardinal Mazarin.] was returned, and then she told him
of it; who told my Lord Digby, "Et bien, Monsieur, vous estes un
fort bon amy donc:" but presently put him out of all; and then,
from a certainty of coming in two or three years' time to be
Mareschall of France, (to which all strangers, even Protestants,
and those as often as French themselves, are capable of coming,
though it be one of the greatest places in France,) he was driven
to go out of France into Flanders; but there was not trusted, nor
received any kindness from the Prince of Conde, as one to whom
also he had been false, as he had been to the Cardinal and
Grandmont.
Pages:
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510