like
not that class of persons around me; they are inexorable censors, who
condemn alike every action of my life."

However, not the king's greatest enemy could have found fault with
his manner of passing his leisure hours. A great part of each day was
occupied in a mysterious manufacture of cases for relics, and one of his
_valets de chambre_, named Turpigny, was intrusted with the commission
of purchasing old shrines and reliquaries; he caused the sacred bones,
or whatever else they contain, to be taken out by Grandelatz, one of his
almoners, re-adjusted, and then returned to new cases. These reliquaries
were distributed by him to his daughters, or any ladies of the court
of great acknowledged piety. When I heard of this I mentioned it to the
king, who wished at first to conceal the fact; but, as he was no adept
at falsehood or disguise, he was compelled to admit the fact.

"I trust, sire," said I, "that you will bestow one of your prettiest and
best-arranged reliquaries on me."

"No, no," returned he, hastily, "that cannot be."

"And why not?" asked I.

"Because," answered he, "it would be sinful of me. Ask anything else in
my power to bestow, and it shall be yours."

This was no hypocrisy on the part of Louis XV, who, spite of his
somewhat irregular mode of life, professed to hold religion in the
highest honor and esteem; to all that it proscribed he paid the
submission of a child. We had ample proofs of this in the sermons
preached at Versailles by the abbe de Beauvais, afterwards bishop of
Senetz.

This ecclesiastic, filled with an inconsiderate zeal, feared not openly
to attack the king in his public discourses; he even went so far as to
interfere with many things of which he was not a competent judge, and
which by no means belonged to his jurisdiction: in fact, there were
ample grounds for sending the abbe to the Bastille. The court openly
expressed its dissatisfaction at this audacity, and for my own part I
could not avoid evincing the lively chagrin it caused me. Yet, would you
believe it, Louis XV declared, in a tone from which there was no appeal
abbe had merely done his duty, and that those who had been less
scrupulous in the performance of theirs, would do well to be silent on
the subject. This was not all; the cardinal de la Roche Aymon, his grand
almoner, refused to sanction the nomination of M. de Beauvais to the
bishopric, under the pretext of his not being nobly descended.

M. de Beyons