King, who as I have said, was fond of air,
and feared warm rooms, was astonished upon arriving to find everything
close shut, and ordered the windows to be opened; would not spare them an
inch; and up to ten o'clock, when he went to supper, kept them open,
utterly regardless of the cool night air, although he knew well what a
state she was in. If there was to be music, fever or headache availed
not; a hundred wax candles flashed all the same in her eyes. The King,
in fact, always followed his own inclination, without ever asking whether
she was inconvenienced.

The tranquillity and pious resignation of the King during the last days
of his illness, was a matter of some surprise to many people, as, indeed,
it deserved to be. By way of explanation, the doctors said that the
malady he died of, while it deadens and destroys all bodily pain, calms
and annihilates all heart pangs and agitation of the mind.

They who were in the sick-chamber, during the last days of his illness,
gave another reason.

The Jesuits constantly admit the laity, even married, into their company.
This fact is certain. There is no doubt that Des Noyers, Secretary of
State under Louis XIII., was of this number, or that many others have
been so too. These licentiates make the same vow as the Jesuits, as far
as their condition admits: that is, unrestricted obedience to the
General, and to the superiors of the company. They are obliged to supply
the place of the vows of poverty and chastity, by promising to give all
the service and all the protection in their power to the Company, above
all, to be entirely submissive to the superiors and to their confessor.
They are obliged to perform, with exactitude, such light exercises of
piety as their confessor may think adapted to the circumstances of their
lives, and that he simplifies as much as he likes. It answers the
purpose of the Company to ensure to itself those hidden auxiliaries whom
it lets off cheaply. But nothing must pass through their minds, nothing
must come to their knowledge that they do not reveal to their confessor;
and that which is not a secret of the conscience, to the superiors, if
the confessor thinks fit. In everything, too, they must obey without
comment, the superior and the confessors.

It has been pretended that Pere Tellier had inspired the King, long
before his death, with the desire to be admitted, on this footing, into
the Company; that he had vaunted to him the privileg