ABSTRACT
The ceremony of swearing to the treaty of peace concluded at Nimiguen between the Crowns of France and Spain, was performed here the last of August. I had a great desire to have seen what passed then; but as women are not to be present there so the Constable of Castille promised to get us into the King’s chamber as soon as he should be gone into the great hall. Madam Gueux, the Danish ambassador’s lady, and Madam de Chais, the envoy of Holland’s lady, were there also. We went up at a private pair of stairs, where one of the Constable’s gentlemen waited to receive us, and we tarried for some time in a very fine closet full of Spanish books, well bound and very diverting. There, amongst others, I found the History of Don Quixote, the famous Knight of the Mancha, in which the plainness and the subtlety of the expression, the weight and strength of proverbs, and that which the Spaniards call el pico, that is, the smartness and nicety of a language, appeared quite otherwise than the translations which we have in French. I was so pleased in reading it that I hardly thought of seeing the ceremony. It began as soon as the Marquis de Villars came, and through a lattice-window which was opened we saw what passed.
