egislative achievements of the prince. His work being finished, he came
to present it to his Majesty, who on that day was dining with me. In one
of the compartments the painter had depicted his hero in the guise of
Bacchus; the King immediately took up a bottle of clear water and drank a
big glass. I gave a great peal of laughter, and said to M. le Brun, "You
see, monsieur, his Majesty's decision in that libation of pure water."

M. le Brun changed his design, seeing the King had no love for Bacchus,
but he left the Thundering Jove, and all the other mythological
flatteries, in regard to which no opinion had been given.

The Jesuits for a long time past had groaned at seeing, exactly opposite
the Palace,--[In the midst of the semicircle in front of the Palais de
Justice. ]--in the centre of Paris, that humiliating pyramid which
accused them of complicity with, or inciting, the famous regicide of the
student, Jean Chatel, assassin of Henri IV. Pere de la Chaise, many
times and always in vain, had prayed his Majesty to render justice to the
virtues of his order, and to command the destruction of this slanderous
monument. The King had constantly refused, alleging to-day one motive,
to-morrow another. One day, when the professed House of Paris came to
hand him a respectful petition on the subject, his Majesty begged Madame
de Maintenon to read it to him, and engaged us to listen to it with
intelligence, in order to be able to give an opinion.

The Jesuits said in this document that the Parliament, with an excessive
zeal, had formerly pushed things much too far in this matter. "For that
Jean Chatel, student with the Jesuit Fathers, having been heard to say to
his professor that the King of Navarre, a true Huguenot, ought not to
reign over France, which was truly Catholic, the magistrates were not,
therefore, justified in concluding that that Jesuit, and all the Jesuits,
had directed the dagger of Jean Chatel, a madman."

The petition further pointed out that "the good King Henri IV., who was
better informed, had decided to recall the Society of Jesus, had
reestablished it in all his colleges, and had even chosen a confessor
from their ranks.

"This fearful pyramid, surcharged with wrathful inscriptions," added the
petition, "designates our Society as a perpetual hotbed of regicidal
conspiracy, and presents us to credulous people as an association of
ambitious, thankless and corrupt assassins!"

[This monument rep