[Here Madame de Montespan forgets what she has just said, that Saint-Cyr cost “immense sums,”—­an ordinary effect of passion.—­Ed. Note]

The only beauty about the house is in the laundry and gardens.  All the rest reminds you of a convent of Capuchins.  The chapel has not even necessary and indispensable dignity; it is a long, narrow barn, without arches, pillars, or decorations.  The King, having wished to know beforehand what revenue would be needed for a community of four hundred persons, consulted M. de Louvois.  That minister, accustomed to calculate open-handedly, put in an estimate of five hundred thousand livres a year.  The foundress presented hers, which came to no more than twenty-five thousand crowns.  His Majesty adopted a middle course, and assigned a revenue of three hundred thousand livres to his Royal House of Saint Cyr.

The foundress, foreseeing the financial embarrassments which have supervened later, conceived the idea of making the clergy (who are childless) support the education of these three hundred and fifty young ladies.  In consequence, she cast her eyes upon the rich abbey of Saint Denis, then vacant, and suggested it to the King, as being almost sufficient to provide for the new establishment.

This idea astonished the prince.  He found it, at first, audacious, not to say perilous; but, on further reflection, considering that the monks of Saint Denis live under the rule of a prior, and never see their abbot, who is almost always a great noble and a man of the world, his Majesty consented to suppress the said abbey in order to provide for the children.

The monks of Saint Denis, alarmed at such an innovation (which did not, however, affect their own goods and revenues), composed a petition in the form of the factum that our advocates draw up in a suit.  They exclaimed in this document “on the disrepute which this innovation would bring upon their ancient, respectable, and illustrious community.  In suppressing the title of Abbot of Saint Denis,” they said further, “your Majesty, in reality, suppresses our abbey; and if our abbey is reduced to nothing, our basilica, where the Kings, your ancestors, lie, will be no more than a royal church, and will cease to be abbatial.”

Further on, this petition said:  “Sire, may it please your Majesty, whose eyes can see so far, to appreciate this innovation in all its terrible consequences.  By striking to-day dissolution and death into the first abbey of your kingdom, do you not fear to leave behind you a great and sinister precedent? . . .  What Louis the Great has looked upon as possible will seem righteous and necessary to your successors; and it will happen, maybe, before long, that the thirst for conquests and the needs of the State (those constant and familiar pretexts of ministers) will authorise some political Attila to extend your work, and wreak destruction upon the tabernacle by depriving it of the splendour which is its due, and which sustains it.”