I should particularly avoid soiling this page with an account of the operation for fistula which Courcillon, only son of Dangeau, had performed upon him, but for the extreme ridicule with which it was accompanied.  Courcillon was a dashing young fellow, much given to witty sayings, to mischief, to impiety, and to the filthiest debauchery, of which latter, indeed, this operation passed publicly as the fruit.  His mother, Madams Dangeau, was in the strictest intimacy with Madame de Maintenon.  They two alone, of all the Court, were ignorant of the life Courcillon led.  Madame was much afflicted; and quitted his bed-side, even for a moment, with pain.  Madame de Maintenon entered into her sorrow, and went every day to bear her company at the pillow of Courcillon.  Madame d’Heudicourt, another intimate friend of Madame de Maintenon, was admitted there also, but scarcely anybody else.  Courcillon listened to them, spoke devotionally to them, and uttered the reflections suggested by his state.  They, all admiration, published everywhere that he was a saint.  Madame d’Heudicourt and a few others who listened to these discourses, and who knew the pilgrim well, and saw him loll out his tongue at them on the sly, knew not what to do to prevent their laughter, and as soon as they could get away went and related all they had heard to their friends.  Courcillon, who thought it a mighty honour to have Madame de Maintenon every day for nurse, but who, nevertheless, was dying of weariness, used to see his friends in the evening (when Madame de Maintenon and his mother were gone), and would relate to them, with burlesque exaggeration, all the miseries he had suffered during the day, and ridicule the devotional discourses he had listened to.  All the time his illness lasted, Madame de Maintenon came every day to see him, so that her credulity, which no one dared to enlighten, was the laughing-stock of the Court.  She conceived such a high opinion of the virtue of Courcillon, that she cited him always as an example, and the King also formed the same opinion.  Courcillon took good care not to try and cultivate it when he became cured; yet neither the King nor Madame de Maintenon opened their eyes, or changed their conduct towards him.  Madame de Maintenon, it must be said, except in the sublime intrigue of her government and with the King, was always the queen of dupes.

It would seem that there are, at certain times, fashions in crimes as in clothes.  At the period of the Voysins and the Brinvilliers, there were nothing but poisoners abroad; and against these, a court was expressly instituted, called ardente, because it condemned them to the flames.  At the time of which I am now speaking, 1703, for I forgot to relate what follows in its proper place, forgers of writings were in the ascendant, and became so common, that a chamber was established composed of councillors of state and others, solely to judge the accusations which this sort of criminals gave rise to.