The Forty Hours' Prayers.--Thanks of the Marquise
to the Prelate.--His Visit to Saint Joseph.--Anger of the Marquise.--Her
Welcome to the Prelate.

The insult offered me at the Comedie Francaise by a handful of the
thoughtless immediately spread through the capital, and became, as it is
easy to imagine, the talk of all the salons. I was aware that the
Duchesse de Lesdiguieres was keenly interested in this episode, and had
embellished and, as it were, embroidered it with her commentaries and
reflections. All these women who misconduct themselves are pitiless and
severe. The more their scandalous conduct brands them on the forehead,
the more they cry out against scandal. Their whole life is bemired with
vice, and their mouth articulates no other words than prudence and
virtue, like those corrupt and infected doctors who have no indulgence
for their patients.

The Duchesse de Lesiguieres, for a long time associated with the
Archbishop of Paris, and known to live with that prelate like a miller
with his wife, dared to say, in her salon that my presence at Racine's
tragedy was, at the least, very useless, and the public having come there
to see a debutante, certainly did not expect me.

The phrase was repeated to me, word for word by my sister De Thianges,
who did not conceal her anger, and wished to avenge me, if I did not
avenge myself. The Marquise then informed me of another thing, which she
had left me in ignorance of all along, from kind motives chiefly, and to
prevent scandal.

"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 conf