to get her into my coach, and then carried her to my aunt De Maignelai, who put her into a convent, where she died eight or ten years after, in great reputation for piety.  My aunt, to whom this young creature confessed that the menaces of the pin-maker had terrified her so much that she would have done whatsoever I wished, was so affected with my behaviour that she went to tell it to the Bishop of Lisieux, who told it to the King.

This second adventure was not of the same nature, but it made as great an impression on the King’s mind.  It was a duel I had with Coutenau, captain of a company of the King’s Light-horse, brave, but wild, who, riding post from Paris as I was going there, made the ostler take off my saddle and put on his.  Upon my telling him I had hired the horse, he gave me a swinging box on the ear, which fetched blood.  I instantly drew my sword, and so did he.  While making our first thrusts his foot slipped, and his sword dropped out of his hand as he fell to the ground.  I retired a little and bade him pick it up, which he did, but it was by the point, for he presented me the handle and begged a thousand pardons.  He told this little story afterwards to the King, with whom he had great freedom.  His Majesty was pleased with it, and remembered both time and place, as you will see hereafter.

The good reception I found at Court gave my relatives some grounds to hope that I might have the coadjutorship of Paris.  At first they found a great deal of difficulty in my uncle’s narrowness of spirit, which is always attended with fears and jealousies; but at length they prevailed upon him, and would have then carried our point, if my friends had not given it out, much against my judgment, that it was done by the consent of the Archbishop of Paris, and if they had not suffered the Sorbonne, the cures, and chapter to return him their thanks.  This affair made too much noise in the world for my interest.  For Cardinal Mazarin, De Noyers, and De Chavigni thwarted me, and told his Majesty that the chapter should not be entrusted with the power of nominating their own archbishop.  And the King was heard to say that I was yet too young.

But we met with a worse obstacle than all from M. de Noyers, Secretary of State, one of the three favourite ministers, who passed for a religious man, and was suspected by some to be a Jesuit in disguise.  He had a secret longing for the archbishopric of Paris, which would shortly be vacant, and therefore thought it expedient to remove me from that city, where he saw I was extremely beloved, and provide me with some post suitable to my years.  He proposed to the King by his confessor to nominate me Bishop of Agde.  The King readily granted the request, which confounded me beyond all expression.  I had no mind to go to Languedoc, and yet so great are the inconveniences of a refusal that not a man had courage to advise me to it.  I became, therefore, my own counsellor, and having resolved with myself