surcharged with wrathful inscriptions,” added the petition, “designates our Society as a perpetual hotbed of regicidal conspiracy, and presents us to credulous people as an association of ambitious, thankless and corrupt assassins!”

“In the name of God, Sire, do away with this criminal and dangerous memento of old passions, unjust hatreds, and the spirit of impiety which, after having led astray magistrates devoid of light, serves to-day only to beguile new generations, whom excess of light blinds,” etc., etc.

When this letter was finished, the King said: 

“I have never seen, the famous pyramid; one of these days I will escape, so that I can see it without being observed.”  And then his Majesty asked me what I thought of the petition.  I answered that I did not understand the inconsistency of M. de Sully, who, after consenting to the return of the Jesuits, had left in its place the monument which accused and branded them.  I put it on Sully, the minister, because I dared not attack Henri IV. himself.

The King answered me:  “There are faults of negligence such as that in every government and under the best administrations.  King Henri my grandfather was vivacity itself.  He was easily irritated; he grew calm in the same way.  For my part, I think that he pardoned the Jesuits, as he had the Leaguers, in the hope that his clemency would bring them all into peaceful disposition; in which he was certainly succeeding when a miscreant killed him.”

Madame de Maintenon, begged to give her opinion, expressed herself in these terms:  “Sire, this petition cannot be other than extremely well done, since a society of clever minds have taken the work in hand.  We have not the trial of Jean Chatel before our eyes, with his interrogatories; it is impossible for us, then, to pronounce on the facts.  In any case, there is one thing very certain:  the Jesuits who are living at present are innocent, and most innocent of the faults of their predecessors.

“The sentences and anathemas which surcharge the pyramid, as they say, can in no way draw down upon them the anger of passers-by and the populace, for these inscriptions, which I have read, are in bad Latin.  This monument, which is very rich and even elegant in itself, is placed upon the site of the destroyed house of the assassin Chatel.  The most ignorant of your Parisians knows this circumstance, which he has learnt from family traditions.  It is good that the people see every day before their eyes this solitary pyramid, which teaches how King’s assassins are punished and what is done with the houses in which they were born.

“King Henri IV., for all his gaiety, had wits enough for four; he left the pyramid standing, like those indulgent people who compromise a great lawsuit, but do not on that account destroy the evidence and documents.

“This monument, besides, is the work of the Parliament of Paris; that illustrious assembly has raised it, and perhaps your Majesty might seem to accuse justice by destroying what it has once done for a good cause.”