In order not to compromise the Duc de Gontaut, the King was told that the valet had come to a knowledge of the business from a letter which he had found in his master’s clothes.  The King took his revenge by humiliating the Archbishop, which he was enabled to do by means of the information he had obtained concerning the conduct of the lady, his protege.  She was found guilty of swindling, in concert with her beloved valet; but, before her punishment was inflicted, the Lieutenant of Police was ordered to lay before Monseigneur a full account of the conduct of his relation and pensioner.  The Archbishop had nothing to object to in the proofs which were submitted to him; he said, with perfect calmness, that she was not his relation; and, raising his hands to heaven, “She is an unhappy wretch,” said he, “who has robbed me of the money which was destined for the poor.  But God knows that, in giving her so large a pension, I did not act lightly.  I had, at that time, before my eyes the example of a young woman who once asked me to grant her seventy louis a year, promising me that she would always live very virtuously, as she had hitherto done.  I refused her, and she said, on leaving me, ’I must turn to the left, Monseigneur, since the way on the right is closed against me:  The unhappy creature has kept her word but too well.  She found means of establishing a faro-table at her house, which is tolerated; and she joins to the most profligate conduct in her own person the infamous trade of a corrupter of youth; her house is the abode of every vice.  Think, sir, after that, whether it was not an act of prudence, on my part, to grant the woman in question a pension, suitable to the rank in which I thought her born, to prevent her abusing the gifts of youth, beauty, and talents, which she possessed, to her own perdition, and the destruction of others.”  The Lieutenant of Police told the King that he was touched with the candour and the noble simplicity of the prelate.  “I never doubted his virtues,” replied the King, “but I wish he would be quiet.”  This same Archbishop gave a pension of fifty louis a year to the greatest scoundrel in Paris.  He is a poet, who writes abominable verses; this pension is granted on condition that his poems are never printed.  I learned this fact from M. de Marigny, to whom he recited some of his horrible verses one evening, when he supped with him, in company with some people of quality.  He chinked the money in his pocket.  “This is my good Archbishop’s,” said he, laughing; “I keep my word with him:  my poem will not be printed during my life, but I read it.  What would the good prelate say if he knew that I shared my last quarter’s allowance with a charming little opera-dancer?  ’It is the Archbishop, then, who keeps me,’ said she to me; ‘Oh, la! how droll that is!’” The King heard this, and was much scandalised at it.  “How difficult it is to do good!” said he.