a bet that he did not know who wrote the Lord’s Prayer.  He defended himself as well as he was able, and succeeded in leaving the table without being called upon to decide the point.  Caumartin, who saw his embarrassment, ran to him, and kindly whispered in his ear that Moses was the author of the Lord’s Prayer.  Thus strengthened, Breteuil returned to the attack, brought, while taking coffee, the conversation back again to the bet; and, after reproaching Madame de Pontchartrain for supposing him ignorant upon such a point, and declaring he was ashamed of being obliged to say such a trivial thing, pronounced emphatically that it was Moses who had written the Lord’s Prayer.  The burst of laughter that, of course, followed this, overwhelmed him with confusion.  Poor Breteuil was for a long time at loggerheads with his friend, and the Lord’s Prayer became a standing reproach to him.

He had a friend, the Marquis de Gesvres, who, upon some points, was not much better informed.  Talking one day in the cabinet of the King, and admiring in the tone of a connoisseur some fine paintings of the Crucifixion by the first masters, he remarked that they were all by one hand.

He was laughed at, and the different painters were named, as recognized by their style.

“Not at all,” said the Marquis, “the painter is called INRI; do you not see his name upon all the pictures?” What followed after such gross stupidity and ignorance may be imagined.

At the end of this year the King resolved to undertake three grand projects, which ought to have been carried out long before:  the chapel of Versailles, the Church of the Invalides, and the altar of Notre-Dame de Paris.  This last was a vow of Louis XIII., made when, he no longer was able to accomplish it, and which he had left to his successor, who had been more than fifty years without thinking of it.

On the 6th of January, upon the reception of the ambassadors at the house of the Duchesse de Bourogogne, an adventure happened which I will here relate.  M. de Lorraine belonged to a family which had been noted for its pretensions, and for the disputes of precedency in which it engaged.  He was as prone to this absurdity as the rest, and on this occasion incited the Princesse d’Harcourt, one of his relations, to act in a manner that scandalised all the Court.  Entering the room in which the ambassadors were to be received and where a large number of ladies were already collected, she glided behind the Duchesse de Rohan, and told her to pass to the left.  The Duchesse de Rohan, much surprised, replied that she was very well placed already.  Whereupon, the Princesse d’Harcourt, who was tall and strong, made no further ado, but with her two arms seized the Duchesse de Rohan, turned her round, and sat down in her place.  All the ladies were strangely scandalised at this, but none dared say a word, not even Madame de Lude, lady in waiting on the Duchesse de Bourgogne, who, for her