Fontanges.  That is hard:  how can I do it?  I see nothing so detestable in mine.  Do you?  To love is easier.  I love God whenever I think of him, he has been so very good to me; but I cannot hate myself, if I would.  As God hath not hated me, why should I?  Beside, it was he who made the King to love me; for I heard you say in a sermon that the hearts of kings are in his rule and governance.  As for titles and dignities, I do not care much about them while His Majesty loves me, and calls me his Angelique.  They make people more civil about us; and therefore it must be a simpleton who hates or disregards them, and a hypocrite who pretends it.  I am glad to be a duchess.  Manon and Lizette have never tied my garter so as to hurt me since, nor has the mischievous old La Grange said anything cross or bold; on the contrary, she told me what a fine colour and what a plumpness it gave me.  Would not you rather be a duchess than a waiting-maid or a nun, if the King gave you your choice?

Bossuet.  Pardon me, mademoiselle, I am confounded at the levity of your question.

Fontanges.  I am in earnest, as you see.

Bossuet.  Flattery will come before you in other and more dangerous forms:  you will be commended for excellences which do not belong to you; and this you will find as injurious to your repose as to your virtue.  An ingenuous mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest reproof.  If you reject it, you are unhappy; if you accept it, you are undone.  The compliments of a king are of themselves sufficient to pervert your intellect.

Fontanges.  There you are mistaken twice over.  It is not my person that pleases him so greatly:  it is my spirit, my wit, my talents, my genius, and that very thing which you have mentioned—­what was it? my intellect.  He never complimented me the least upon my beauty.  Others have said that I am the most beautiful young creature under heaven; a blossom of Paradise, a nymph, an angel; worth (let me whisper it in your ear—­do I lean too hard?) a thousand Montespans.  But His Majesty never said more on the occasion than that I was imparagonable! (what is that?) and that he adored me; holding my hand and sitting quite still, when he might have romped with me and kissed me.

Bossuet.  I would aspire to the glory of converting you.

Fontanges.  You may do anything with me but convert me:  you must not do that; I am a Catholic born.  M. de Turenne and Mademoiselle de Duras were heretics:  you did right there.  The King told the chancellor that he prepared them, that the business was arranged for you, and that you had nothing to do but get ready the arguments and responses, which you did gallantly—­did not you?  And yet Mademoiselle de Duras was very awkward for a long while afterwards in crossing herself, and was once remarked to beat her breast in the litany with the points of two fingers at a time, when everyone is taught to use only the second, whether it has a ring upon it or not.  I am sorry she did so; for people might think her insincere in her conversion, and pretend that she kept a finger for each religion.