you seem to me to have grown." The King laughed, and said,
"Monsieur, I am past the age of growing."--"Sire," rejoined the Duke,
"do you know everybody says I am very much like you, and quite as
good-looking as you are?"--"That is very probable," said the King, still
laughing. The audience was then finished, and the Duke went away. This
fool could never engage his brother-in-law's favour, for M. de Luxembourg
had no regard for him.

When the Queen had the government of the country, all the females of the
Court, even to the very servants, became intriguers. They say it was the
most ridiculous thing in the world to see the eagerness with which women
meddled with the Queen-mother's regency. At the commencement she knew
nothing at all. She made a present to her first femme de chambre of five
large farms, upon which the whole Court subsisted. When she went to the
Council to propose the affair, everybody laughed, and she was asked how
she proposed to live. She was quite astonished when the thing was
explained to her, for she thought she had only given away five ordinary
farms. This anecdote is very true and was related to me by the old
Chancellor Le Tellier, who was present at the Council. She is said often
to have laughed as she confessed her ignorance. Many other things of a
similar nature happened during the regency.

There is a Bishop of a noble family, tolerably young but very ugly, who
was at first so devout that he thought of entering La Trappe; he wore his
hair combed down straight, and dared not look a woman in the face.
Having learned that in the city where he held his see there was a frail
fair one, whose gallantries had become notorious, he felt a great desire
to convert her and to make her come to the confessional. She was, it is
said, a very pretty woman, and had, moreover, a great deal of wit.

No sooner had the Bishop began to visit than he began to pay attention to
his hair: first he powdered it, and then he had it dressed. At length he
swallowed the bait so completely, that he neither quitted the fair siren
by night nor by day. His clergy ventured to exhort him to put an end to
this scandal, but he replied that, if they did not cease their
remonstrances, he would find means of making them. At length he even
rode through the city in his carriage with his fair penitent.

The people became so enraged at this that they pelted him with stones.
His relations repaired to his diocese for the purpose