For when the "Mémoires de Gramont" were submitted to the censor Fontenelle before their publication he was so scandalised that he flatly refused his approval. The Chevalier on hearing this at once went to Fontenelle and asked him in his characteristic way "what business he had to be more solicitous of his reputation than he was himself, and demanded that the book should pass if the freedom with which his character was drawn was the only objection." As Mrs. Jameson has very aptly remarked, "Fontenelle might have replied to him as de Gramont did on another occasion to Madame de Hérault. The Count had visited this lady to pay her his condolence on the death of her husband; she received him with an air of extreme coldness, upon which, suddenly changing his tone, he exclaimed gaily, 'Is that the way you take your loss? Well, to tell you the truth, I don't care any more about it than you do!'"
Such an Epicurean as de Gramont scarcely needed the advice of St. Evremond. No one knew the world better than he, or was more deeply acquainted with all its vice, at which, without seriously polluting himself with it, he laughed in the gayest, most cynical way. He had so little religion that once in old age, when his wife in an attempt to convert him recited the Lord's Prayer, he remarked, "That is very fine, who wrote it?" His moral sense was entirely lacking. Women meant to him an amour, nothing more. And even La Belle Hamilton, whose virtue, to his credit be it said, he never attempted to attack, had so little real hold of his affections that on being pardoned by Louis he would have gone back to France without marrying her had it not been for her brothers. Two of them, who had no intention of letting her be compromised by such a desertion, rode after him and overtook him at Dover. "Chevalier," they cried, galloping up and addressing him in his own fashion, "haven't you forgot something in London?"
"Excuse me," he replied gaily, "I have forgotten to marry your sister."
He returned and married her, making her, it must be confessed, the best of husbands. His conduct when married was in this respect in striking contrast with that of the de Gramonts of his time generally. For his brother the Maréchal was notoriously brutal; while the private lives of the Comte de Guiche and the Princess of Monaco, his nephew and niece, could not in the present day be exposed in print.