As for M. de Vendome, without any resource, save what he found in his vices and his valets, he did not refrain from bragging among them of the friendship of Monseigneur for him, of which he said he was well assured.  Violence had been done to Monseigneur’s feelings.  He was reduced to this misery of hoping that his words would be spread about by these valets, and would procure him some consideration from those who thought of the future.  But the present was insupportable to him.  To escape from it, he thought of serving in Spain, and wrote to Madame des Ursins asking employment.  The King was annoyed at this step, and flatly refused to let him go to Spain.  His intrigue, therefore, came to an end at once.

Nobody gained more by the fall of M. de Vendome than Madame de Maintenon.  Besides the joy she felt in overthrowing a man who, through M. du Maine, owed everything to her, and yet dared to resist her so long and successfully, she felt, also, that her credit became still more the terror of the Court; for no one doubted that what had occurred was a great example of her power.  We shall presently see how she furnished another, which startled no less.

CHAPTER XLVI.

It is time now to retrace my steps to the point from which I have been led away in relating all the incidents which arose out of the terrible winter and the scarcity it caused.

The Court at that time beheld the renewal of a ministry; which from the time it had lasted was worn down to its very roots, and which was on that account only the more agreeable to the King.  On the 20th of January, the Pere La Chaise, the confessor of the King, died at a very advanced age.  He was of good family, and his father would have been rich had he not had a dozen children.  Pere La Chaise succeeded in 1675 to Pere Ferrier as confessor of the King, and occupied that post thirty-two years.  The festival of Easter often caused him politic absences during the attachment of the King for Madame de Montespan.  On one occasion he sent in his place the Pere Deschamps, who bravely refused absolution.  The Pere La Chaise was of mediocre mind but of good character, just, upright, sensible, prudent, gentle, and moderate, an enemy of informers, and of violence of every kind.  He kept clear of many scandalous transactions, befriended the Archbishop of Cambrai as much as he could, refused to push the Port Royal des Champs to its destruction, and always had on his table a copy of the New Testament of Pere Quesnel, saying that he liked what was good wherever he found it.  When near his eightieth year, with his head and his health still good, he wished to retire, but the King would not hear of it.  Soon after, his faculties became worn out, and feeling this, he repeated his wish.  The Jesuits, who perceived his failing more than he did himself, and felt the diminution of his credit, exhorted him to make way for another who should have the grace and