zeal of novelty.  For his part he sincerely desired repose, and he pressed the King to allow him to take it, but all in vain.  He was obliged to bear his burthen to the very end.  Even the infirmities and the decrepitude that afflicted could not deliver him.  Decaying legs, memory extinguished, judgment collapsed, all his faculties confused, strange inconveniences for a confessor—­nothing could disgust the King, and he persisted in having this corpse brought to him and carrying on customary business with it.  At last, two days after a return from Versailles, he grew much weaker, received the sacrament, wrote with his own hand a long letter to the King, received a very rapid and hurried one in reply, and soon after died at five o’clock in the morning very peaceably.  His confessor asked him two things, whether he had acted according to his conscience, and whether he had thought of the interests and honour of the company of Jesuits; and to both these questions he answered satisfactorily.

The news was brought to the King as he came out of his cabinet.  He received it like a Prince accustomed to losses, praised the Pere La Chaise for his goodness, and then said smilingly, before all the courtiers, and quite aloud, to the two fathers who had come to announce the death:  “He was so good that I sometimes reproached him for it, and he used to reply to me:  ‘It is not I who am good; it is you who are hard.’”

Truly the fathers and all the auditors were so surprised at this that they lowered their eyes.  The remark spread directly; nobody was able to blame the Pere La Chaise.  He was generally regretted, for he had done much good and never harm except in self-defence.  Marechal, first surgeon of the King, and possessed of his confidence, related once to me and Madame de Saint-Simon, a very important anecdote referring to this time.  He said that the King, talking to him privately of the Pere La Chaise, and praising him for his attachment, related one of the great proofs he had given of it.  A few years before his death the Pere said that he felt getting old, and that the King might soon have to choose a new confessor; he begged that that confessor might be chosen from among the Jesuits, that he knew them well, that they were far from deserving all that had been said against them, but still—­he knew them well—­and that attachment for the King and desire for his safety induced him to conjure him to act as he requested; because the company contained many sorts of minds and characters which could not be answered for, and must not be reduced to despair, and that the King must not incur a risk—­that in fact an unlucky blow is soon given, and had been given before then.  Marechal turned pale at this recital of the King, and concealed as well as he could the disorder it caused in him.  We must remember that Henry IV. recalled the Jesuits, and loaded them with gifts merely from fear of them.  The King was not superior to Henry IV.  He took care not to forget the communication of the Pere La Chaise, or expose himself to the vengeance of the company by choosing a confessor out of their limits.  He wanted to live, and to live in safety.  He requested the Ducs de Chevreuse and de Beauvilliers to make secret inquiries for a proper person.  They fell into a trap made, were dupes themselves, and the Church and State the victims.