h scattered all objections to the
wind. After consecration at Rome, in 1607, he returned to Paris, and
hastened to take possession of his see of Lucon, "the poorest and the
nastiest in France," as he himself said. He could support poverty, but
he also set great store by riches, and he was seriously anxious for the
expenses of his installation. "Taking after you, that is, being a
little vain," he wrote to one of his fair friends, Madame de Bourges,
with whom he was on terms of familiar correspondence about his affairs,
"I should very much like, being more easy in my circumstances, to make
more show: but what can I do? No house; no carriage; furnished
apartments are inconvenient; I must borrow a coach, horses, and a
coachman, in order to at least arrive at Lucon with a decent turn-out."
He purchased second-hand the velvet bed of one Madame de Marconnay, his
aunt; he made for himself a muff out of a portion of his uncle the
Commander's martenskins. Silver-plate he was very much concerned about.
"I beg you," he wrote to Madame de Bourges, "to send me word what will
be the cost of two dozen silver dishes of fair size, as they are made
now; I should very much like to get them for five hundred crowns, for my
resources are not great. I am quite sure that for a matter of a hundred
crowns more, you would not like me to have anything common. I am a
beggar, as you know; in such sort that I cannot do much in the way of
playing the opulent; but at any rate, when I have silver dishes, my
nobility will be considerably enhanced."

He succeeded, no doubt, in getting his silver dishes and his
well-appointed episcopal mansion; for when, in 1614, he was elected to
the states-general, he had acquired amongst the clergy and at the court
of Louis XIII. sufficient importance to be charged with the duty of
speaking, in presence of the king, on the acceptance of the acts of the
council of Trent, and on the restitution of certain property belonging
to the Catholic church in Warn. He made skilful use of the occasion for
the purpose of still further exalting and improving the question and his
own position. He complained that for a long time past ecclesiastics had
been too rarely summoned to the sovereign's councils, "as if the honor
of serving God," he said, "rendered them incapable of serving the king;"
he took care at the same time to make himself pleasant to the mighty
ones of the hour; he praised the young king for having, on announcing