Not long after this marriage I was unhappily embroiled with the Duc d’Orleans, upon an occasion of no greater importance than my foot-cloth in the Church of Notre-Dame, which was by mistake removed to his seat.  I complained of it to him, and he ordered it to be restored.  Nevertheless the Abby de la Riviere made him believe I had put an affront upon him that was too public to be pardoned.  The Duke was so simple as to believe it, and, while the courtiers turned all into banter, he swore he would receive incense before me at the said church for the future.  In the meantime the Queen sent for me, and told me that the Duke was in a terrible passion, for which she was very sorry, but that nevertheless she could not help being of his opinion, and therefore insisted upon it that I ought to give him satisfaction in the Church of Notre-Dame the Sunday following.  Upon the whole she referred me to Cardinal Mazarin, who declared to me at first that he was very sorry to see me in so much trouble, blamed the Abby for having incensed the Duke to such a degree, and used all the arguments he could to wheedle me to give my consent to being degraded.  And when he saw I was not to be led, he endeavoured to drive me into the snare.  He stormed with an air of authority, and would fain have bullied me into compliance, telling me that hitherto he had spoken as a friend, but that I had forced him henceforth to speak as a minister.  He also began to threaten, and the conversation growing warm, he sought to pick a quarrel by insinuating that if I would do as Saint Ambrose did, I ought to lead a life like him.  As he spoke this loud enough to be heard by some bishops at the other end of the room, I likewise raised my voice, and told him I would endeavour to make the best use of his advice, but he might assure himself I was fully resolved so to imitate Saint Ambrose in this affair that I might, through his means, obtain grace to be able to imitate him in all others.

I had not been long gone home when the Marechal d’Estrees and M. Senneterre came, furnished with all the flowers of rhetoric, to persuade me that degradation was honourable; and finding me immovable, they insinuated that my obstinacy might oblige his Highness to use force, and order his guards to carry me, in spite of myself, to Notre-Dame, and place me there on a seat below his.  I thought this suggestion too ridiculous to mind it at first, but being forewarned of it that very evening by the Duke’s Chancellor, I put myself upon the defensive, which I think is the most ridiculous piece of folly I was ever guilty of, considering it was against a son of France, and when there was a profound tranquillity in the State, without the least appearance of any commotion.  The Duke, to whom I had the honour of being related, was pleased with my boldness.  He remembered the Abby de la Riviere for his insolence in complaining that the Prince de Conti was marked down for a cardinal before him; besides, the Duke knew I was in the right, having made it very evident in a statement I had published upon this head.  He acquainted the Cardinal with it, said he would not suffer the least violence to be offered to me; that I was both his kinsman and devoted servant, and that he would not set out for the army till he saw the affair at an end.