ntention. A good bishop, as perfect and
exemplary as yourself, is worthy of taking a passionate interest in the
regularity of monarchs, and ours must owe you the highest rewards for
this new mark of respect which it has pleased you to give him. I will
find expressions capable of making him feel all that he owes to your
Forty Hours' Prayer, and to that Christian and charitable emotion cast in
the midst of a capital and a public. To all that only your mandate of
accusation and allegorical sermons are lacking. Cardinals' hats, they
say, are made to the measure of strong heads; we will go seek, in the
robing-rooms of Rome, if there be one to meet the proportions of your
ability. If ladies had as much honourable influence over the Vicar of
Jesus Christ as simple bishops allow them, I should solicit, this very
day, your wished-for recompense and exaltation. But it is the monarch's
affair; he will undertake it. I can only offer you, in my own person, M.
Archbishop of Paris, my prayers for yours. My little church of Saint
Joseph has not the same splendour as your cathedral; but the incense that
we burn there is of better quality than yours, for I get it from the
Sultan of Persia. I will instruct my little community to-morrow to hold
our Forty Hours' Prayer, that God may promptly cure you of your Duchesse
de Lesdiguieres, who has been damning you for fourteen years.

Deign to accept these most sincere reprisals, and believe me, without
reserve, Monsieur the Archbishop,

THE MARQUISE DE MONTESPAN.

This letter cast the camp into alarm. There were goings and comings
between the Episcopal Palace and the Jesuits of the Rue Saint Antoine,
and from this professed house to their College of Louis le Grand. The
matadores of the society were of opinion that I should be conciliated by
every possible means, and it was arranged that the Archbishop should pay
me a visit at Saint Joseph's, on the earliest possible occasion, to
exculpate his virtuous colleagues and make me accept his disclaimers. He
came, in effect, the following week. I made him wait for half an hour in
the chapel, for half an hour in my parlour, and I ascended into my
carriage, almost in his presence, without deigning either to see or
salute him.

The mother of four legitimised princes was not made to support such
outrages, nor to have interviews with their insolent authors.

Alarms, anxieties of consciences, weak but virtuous, have always found me
gentle, an