The King answered me:  “There are faults of negligence such as that in every government and under the best administrations.  King Henri my grandfather was vivacity itself.  He was easily irritated; he grew calm in the same way.  For my part, I think that he pardoned the Jesuits, as he had the Leaguers, in the hope that his clemency would bring them all into peaceful disposition; in which he was certainly succeeding when a miscreant killed him.”

Madame de Maintenon, begged to give her opinion, expressed herself in these terms:  “Sire, this petition cannot be other than extremely well done, since a society of clever minds have taken the work in hand.  We have not the trial of Jean Chatel before our eyes, with his interrogatories; it is impossible for us, then, to pronounce on the facts.  In any case, there is one thing very certain:  the Jesuits who are living at present are innocent, and most innocent of the faults of their predecessors.

“The sentences and anathemas which surcharge the pyramid, as they say, can in no way draw down upon them the anger of passers-by and the populace, for these inscriptions, which I have read, are in bad Latin.  This monument, which is very rich and even elegant in itself, is placed upon the site of the destroyed house of the assassin Chatel.  The most ignorant of your Parisians knows this circumstance, which he has learnt from family traditions.  It is good that the people see every day before their eyes this solitary pyramid, which teaches how King’s assassins are punished and what is done with the houses in which they were born.

“King Henri IV., for all his gaiety, had wits enough for four; he left the pyramid standing, like those indulgent people who compromise a great lawsuit, but do not on that account destroy the evidence and documents.

“This monument, besides, is the work of the Parliament of Paris; that illustrious assembly has raised it, and perhaps your Majesty might seem to accuse justice by destroying what it has once done for a good cause.”

The King smiled at the conclusions of the lady in waiting, and said to both of us:  “This is between us three, I pray you, ladies; I will keep Pere de la Chaise amused with promises some day.”

Madame de Maintenon, for a brief time in her first youth a Calvinist, cherished always in the bottom of her heart a good share of those suspicions that Calvin’s doctrine is careful to inspire against the Jesuits.

On the other hand, she retained amongst the Parliament a large number of friends whom she had known formerly at M. Scarron’s, the son of a counsellor of the chamber.  I understood that in those circumstances she was well pleased to prove to the gentlemen of Parliament that the interests of their house were kept in good hands, and that she would not abandon her friends of the Place Royale and the Marais for all the Jesuits and all the pyramids in the world.

The Parliament, which was informed of her conduct and fidelity, bore her infinite good-will for it.  The first president, decorated with his blue riband, came; to express his formal thanks, and begged her to accept in perpetuity a key of honour to the High Chamber.