had determined to send no ambassador to Rome.  The Abbe de La Tremoille was already there; he had been made Cardinal, and was to remain and attend to the affairs of the embassy.  I found out afterwards that I had reason to attribute to Madame de Maintenon and M. du Maine the change in the King’s intention towards me.  Madame de Saint-Simon was delighted.  It seemed as though she foresaw the strange discredit in which the affairs of the King were going to fall in Italy, the embarrassment and the disorder that public misfortunes would cause the finances, and the cruel situation to which all things would have reduced us at Rome.  As for me, I had had so much leisure to console myself beforehand, that I had need of no more.  I felt, however, that I had now lost all favour with the King, and, indeed, he estranged himself from me more and more each day.  By what means I recovered myself it is not yet time to tell.

On the night between the 3rd and 4th of February, Cardinal Coislin, Bishop of Orleans, died.  He was a little man, very fat, who looked like a village curate.  His purity of manners and his virtues caused him to be much loved.  Two good actions of his life deserve to be remembered.

When, after the revocation of the edict of Nantes, the King determined to convert the Huguenots by means of dragoons and torture, a regiment was sent to Orleans, to be spread abroad in the diocese.  As soon as it arrived, M. d’Orleans sent word to the officers that they might make his house their home; that their horses should be lodged in his stables.  He begged them not to allow a single one of their men to leave the town, to make the slightest disorder; to say no word to the Huguenots, and not to lodge in their houses.  He resolved to be obeyed, and he was.  The regiment stayed a month; and cost him a good deal.  At the end of that time he so managed matters that the soldiers were sent away, and none came again.  This conduct, so full of charity, so opposed to that of nearly all the other dioceses, gained as many Huguenots as were gained by the barbarities they suffered elsewhere.  It needed some courage, to say nothing of generosity, to act thus, and to silently blame, as it were, the conduct of the King.

The other action of M. d’Orleans was less public and less dangerous, but was not less good.  He secretly gave away many alms to the poor, in addition to those he gave publicly.  Among those whom he succoured was a poor, broken-down gentleman, without wife or child, to whom he gave four hundred livres of pension, and a place at his table whenever he was at Orleans.  One morning the servants of M. d’Orleans told their master that ten pieces of plate were missing, and that suspicion fell upon the gentleman.  M. d’Orleans could not believe him guilty, but as he did not make his appearance at the house for several days, was forced at last to imagine he was so.  Upon this he sent for the gentleman, who admitted himself to be the offender.