As to my other diamonds, either changed in form or acquired and collected by myself, I destine them for my four children by the King.  These pomps will have served to delight my eyes, which are pleased with them, and then they will go down to their first origin and source, belonging again to the Bourbons whom I have made.

CHAPTER XLI.

The Duchesse de Lesdiguieres.—­Her Jest.—­“The Chaise of Convenience.”—­Anger of the Jesuits.—­They Ally Themselves with the Archbishop of Paris.—­The Forty Hours’ Prayers.—­Thanks of the Marquise to the Prelate.—­His Visit to Saint Joseph.—­Anger of the Marquise.—­Her Welcome to the Prelate.

The insult offered me at the Comedie Francaise by a handful of the thoughtless immediately spread through the capital, and became, as it is easy to imagine, the talk of all the salons.  I was aware that the Duchesse de Lesdiguieres was keenly interested in this episode, and had embellished and, as it were, embroidered it with her commentaries and reflections.  All these women who misconduct themselves are pitiless and severe.  The more their scandalous conduct brands them on the forehead, the more they cry out against scandal.  Their whole life is bemired with vice, and their mouth articulates no other words than prudence and virtue, like those corrupt and infected doctors who have no indulgence for their patients.

The Duchesse de Lesiguieres, for a long time associated with the Archbishop of Paris, and known to live with that prelate like a miller with his wife, dared to say, in her salon that my presence at Racine’s tragedy was, at the least, very useless, and the public having come there to see a debutante, certainly did not expect me.

The phrase was repeated to me, word for word by my sister De Thianges, who did not conceal her anger, and wished to avenge me, if I did not avenge myself.  The Marquise then informed me of another thing, which she had left me in ignorance of all along, from kind motives chiefly, and to prevent scandal.

“You remember, my sister,” said the Marquise to me, “a sort of jest which escaped you when Pere de la Chaise made the King communicate, in spite of all the noise of his new love affair and the follies of Mademoiselle de Fontanges?  You nicknamed that benevolent Jesuit ’the Chaise of Convenience.’  Your epigram made all Paris laugh except the hypocrites and the Jesuits.  Those worthy men resolved to have full satisfaction for your insult by stirring up the whole of Paris against you.  The Archbishop entered readily into their plot, for he thought you supplanted; and he granted them the forty Hours’ Prayers, to obtain from God your expulsion from Court.  Harlay, who is imprudent only in his debauches, preserved every external precaution, because of the King, whose temper he knows; he told the Jesuits that they must not expect either his pastoral letter or his mandate,