One day he came to me by appointment, with a copy of the constitution in his hand in order that we might thoroughly discuss it.  I was at Versailles.  In order to understand what I am going to relate, I must give some account of my apartments there.  Let me say, then, that I had a little back cabinet, leading out of another cabinet, but so arranged that you would not have thought it was there.  It received no light except from the outer cabinet, its own windows being boarded up.  In this back cabinet I had a bureau, some chairs, books, and all I needed; my friends called it my “shop,” and in truth it did not ill resemble one.

Father Tellier came at the hour he had fixed.  As chance would have it, M. le Duc and Madame la Duchesse de Berry had invited themselves to a collation with Madame de Saint-Simon that morning.  I knew that when they arrived I should no longer be master of my chamber or of my cabinet.  I told Father Tellier this, and he was much vexed.  He begged me so hard to find some place where we might be inaccessible to the company, that at last, pressed by him to excess, I said I knew of only one expedient by which we might become free:  and I told him that he must dismiss his ‘vatble’ (as the brother who always accompanies a monk is called), and that then, furnished with candles, we would go and shut ourselves up in my back cabinet, where we could neither be seen nor heard, if we took care not to speak loud when anybody approached.  He thought the expedient admirable, dismissed his companion, and we sat down opposite each other, the bureau between us, with two candles alight upon it.

He immediately began to sing the praises of the Constitution Unigenitus, a copy of which he placed on the table.  I interrupted him so as to come at once to the excommunication proposition.  We discussed it with much politeness, but with little accord.  I shall not pretend to report our dispute.  It was warm and long.  I pointed out to Father Tellier, that supposing the King and the little Dauphin were both to die, and this was a misfortune which might happen, the crown of France would by right of birth belong to the King of Spain; but according to the renunciation just made, it would belong to M. le Duc de Berry and his branch, or in default to M. le Duc d’Orleans.  “Now,” said I, “if the two brothers dispute the crown, and the Pope favouring the one should excommunicate the other, it follows, according to our new constitution, that the excommunicated must abandon all his claims, all his partisans, all his forces, and go over to the other side.  For you say, an unjust excommunication ought to hinder us from doing our duty.  So that in one fashion or another the Pope is master of all the crowns in his communion, is at liberty to take them away or to give them as he pleases, a liberty so many Popes have claimed and so many have tried to put in action.”