As he uttered these words, he looked hard at my pew, and soon made me understand by his egordium how interesting his discourse would be to me.  Written with rare grace of style, it was merely a piece of satire from beginning to end,—­of satire so audacious that it was constantly levelled at the King.

The orator brought before us in succession lifelike portraits of the Queen, of her august spouse, of my children, of M. de Montespan, and of myself.  Upon some he lavished praise; others he vehemently rebuked; while to others he gave tender pity.  Anon he caused the lips of his hearers to curl in irony, and again, roused their indignation or touched them to tears.

Any one else would have been bored by such a rigmarole; it rather amused me.

That evening, and for a week afterwards, nothing else but this sermon was talked of at Versailles.  The Queen had received complete satisfaction.  Before me she was at pains not to laugh, and I was pleased to see that her resentment had almost disappeared.

Upon his return, the King was for punishing such an offence as this.  Things are not easily hidden from him; his Majesty desired to know the name and rank of the ecclesiastic.  The entire Court replied that he was a good-looking young Franciscan.

The chief almoner, being forced to state the monastery from which the preacher came, mentioned the Cordeliers of Paris.  There it transpired that the monk told off by the prior for this enterprise had been too frightened to execute it, and had sent, as his deputy, a young actor from Orleans,—­a brother of his, who thus could not say no.

So, as it happened, Queen Maria Theresa and her chief almoner (an exemplary person) had caused virtue to be preached to me by a young play-actor!  The King dared not take further proceedings in so strange a matter, for fear lest one scandal might beget a far greater one.  It was this that caused Madame Cornuel to remark, “The pulpit is in want of comedians; they work wonders there!”

CHAPTER XXXI.

The King Alters His Opinion about Madame Scarron.—­He Wants Her to Assume Another Name.—­He Gives Her the Maintenon Estates.—­She and Madame de Montespan Visit These.—­A Strange Story.

At first the King used to feel afraid of Madame Scarron, and seemingly laughed at me when I endeavoured to persuade him that there was nothing affected or singular about her.  The Marquis de Beringhen, for some reason or other, had prejudiced his Majesty against her, so that very often, when the King heard that she was visiting me, he never got beyond the vestibule, but at once withdrew.  One day she was telling me, in her pleasant, original way, a funny tale about the famous Brancas, and I laughed till I cried again,—­in fact, until I nearly made myself quite ill.