I have only just been informed, monseigneur, of the pains you have been at with God for the amelioration of the King and of myself.  The gratitude which I feel for it cannot be expressed.  I pray you to believe it to be as pure and sincere as your intention.  A good bishop, as perfect and exemplary as yourself, is worthy of taking a passionate interest in the regularity of monarchs, and ours must owe you the highest rewards for this new mark of respect which it has pleased you to give him.  I will find expressions capable of making him feel all that he owes to your Forty Hours’ Prayer, and to that Christian and charitable emotion cast in the midst of a capital and a public.  To all that only your mandate of accusation and allegorical sermons are lacking.  Cardinals’ hats, they say, are made to the measure of strong heads; we will go seek, in the robing-rooms of Rome, if there be one to meet the proportions of your ability.  If ladies had as much honourable influence over the Vicar of Jesus Christ as simple bishops allow them, I should solicit, this very day, your wished-for recompense and exaltation.  But it is the monarch’s affair; he will undertake it.  I can only offer you, in my own person, M. Archbishop of Paris, my prayers for yours.  My little church of Saint Joseph has not the same splendour as your cathedral; but the incense that we burn there is of better quality than yours, for I get it from the Sultan of Persia.  I will instruct my little community to-morrow to hold our Forty Hours’ Prayer, that God may promptly cure you of your Duchesse de Lesdiguieres, who has been damning you for fourteen years.

Deign to accept these most sincere reprisals, and believe me, without reserve, Monsieur the Archbishop,

The marquise de Montespan.

This letter cast the camp into alarm.  There were goings and comings between the Episcopal Palace and the Jesuits of the Rue Saint Antoine, and from this professed house to their College of Louis le Grand.  The matadores of the society were of opinion that I should be conciliated by every possible means, and it was arranged that the Archbishop should pay me a visit at Saint Joseph’s, on the earliest possible occasion, to exculpate his virtuous colleagues and make me accept his disclaimers.  He came, in effect, the following week.  I made him wait for half an hour in the chapel, for half an hour in my parlour, and I ascended into my carriage, almost in his presence, without deigning either to see or salute him.

The mother of four legitimised princes was not made to support such outrages, nor to have interviews with their insolent authors.

Alarms, anxieties of consciences, weak but virtuous, have always found me gentle, and almost resigned; the false scruples of hypocrites and libertines will never receive from me aught but disdain and contempt.

CHAPTER XLII.