“You remember, my sister,” said the Marquise to me, “a sort of jest which escaped you when Pere de la Chaise made the King communicate, in spite of all the noise of his new love affair and the follies of Mademoiselle de Fontanges?  You nicknamed that benevolent Jesuit ’the Chaise of Convenience.’  Your epigram made all Paris laugh except the hypocrites and the Jesuits.  Those worthy men resolved to have full satisfaction for your insult by stirring up the whole of Paris against you.  The Archbishop entered readily into their plot, for he thought you supplanted; and he granted them the forty Hours’ Prayers, to obtain from God your expulsion from Court.  Harlay, who is imprudent only in his debauches, preserved every external precaution, because of the King, whose temper he knows; he told the Jesuits that they must not expect either his pastoral letter or his mandate, but he allowed them secret commentaries, the familiar explanations of the confessional; he charged them to let the other monks and priests into the secret, and the field of battle being decided, the skirmishes began.  With the aid and assistance of King David, that trivial breastplate of every devotional insult, the preachers announced to their congregations that they must fast and mortify themselves for the cure of King David, who had fallen sick.  The orators favoured with some wit embellished their invectives; the ignorant and coarse amongst the priests spoiled everything.  The Blessed Sacrament was exposed for a whole week in the churches, and it ended by an announcement to Israel, that their cry had reached the firmament, that David had grown cold to Bathsheba (they did not add, nevertheless, that David preferred another to Bathsheba with his whole heart).  But the Duchesse de Fontanges gave offence neither to the Archbishop of Paris nor to the Jesuits.  Her mind showed no hostility.  The beauty was quite incapable of saying in the face of the world that a Jesuit resembled a ‘Chaise of Convenience.’

“The Duchesse de Lesdiguieres, covered with rouge and crimes, has put herself at the head of all these intrigues,” added my sister; “and without having yet been able to subdue herself to the external parade of devotion, she has allowed herself to use against you all the base tricks of the most devout hypocrites.”

“Let me act,” I said to my sister; “this lady’s good offices call for a mark of my gratitude.  The Forty Hours’ Prayer is an attention that is not paid to every one; I owe M. de Paris my thanks.”

I went and sat down at my writing-table, and wrote this fine prelate the following honeyed missive: