Some months after, his profound ignorance and envenomed malice furnished me with a fresh occasion to exercise patience.  The Bishop of Warmia, one of the ambassadors that came to fetch the Queen of Poland, was very desirous to celebrate the marriage in the Church of Notre-Dame.  Though the archbishops of Paris never suffered solemnities of this kind to be celebrated in their churches by any but cardinals of the royal family, and though my uncle had been highly blamed by all his clergy for permitting the Cardinal de La Rochefoucault to marry the Queen of England,—­[Henriette Marie of France, daughter of Henri IV., died 1669.]—­nevertheless I was ordered by a ‘lettre de cachet’ to prepare the said Church of Notre Dame for the Bishop of Warmia, which order ran in the same style as that given to the ‘prevot des marchands’ when he is to prepare the Hotel de Ville for a public ball.  I showed the letter to the deans and canons, and said I did not doubt but it was a stratagem of one or other of the Secretary of State’s clerks to get a gift of money.

I thereupon went to the Cardinal, pressed him with both reasons and precedents, and said that, as I was his particular humble servant, I hoped he would be pleased to lay them before her Majesty, making use of all other persuasion—­which I thought would dispose him to a compliance.  It was then that I learned that he only wanted an opportunity to embroil me with the Queen, for though I saw plainly that he was sorry he had given such orders before he knew their consequence, yet, after some pause, he reassumed his former obstinacy to the very last degree; and, because I spoke in the name of the Archbishop and of the whole Church of Paris, he stormed as much as if a private person upon his own authority had presumed to make a speech to him at the head of fifty malcontents.  I endeavoured with all respect to show him that our case was quite different; but he was so ignorant of our manners and customs that he took everything by the wrong handle.  He ended the conversation very abruptly and rudely, and referred me to the Queen.  I found her Majesty in a fretful mood, and all I could get out of her was a promise to hear the chapter upon this affair, without whose consent—­I had declared I could not conclude anything.

I sent for them accordingly, and having introduced them to the Queen, they spoke very discreetly and to the purpose.  The Queen sent us back to the Cardinal, who entertained us only with impertinences, and as he had but a superficial knowledge of the French language, he concluded by telling me that I had talked very insolently to him the night before.  You may imagine that that word was enough to vex me, but having resolved beforehand to keep my temper, I smiled, and said to the deputies, “Gentlemen, this is fine language.”  He was nettled at my smile, and said to me in aloud tone, “Do you know whom you talk to?  I will teach you how to behave.”  Now, I confess, my blood began to boil.  I told him that the Coadjutor of Paris was talking to Cardinal Mazarin, but that perhaps he thought himself the Cardinal de Lorraine, and me the Bishop of Metz, his suffragan.