my good
actions, and although it makes no great noise in the world, I would
rather have founded it than Saint Cyr, where the most exalted houses
procure admission for their children with false certificates of poverty.

The buildings of Saint Cyr, in spite of all the sums they have absorbed,
have no external nobility or grandeur. The foundress put upon it the
seal of her parsimony, or, rather, of her general timidity. She is like
Moliere's Harpagon, who would like to do great things for little money.

[Here Madame de Montespan forgets what she has just said, that Saint-Cyr
cost "immense sums,"--an ordinary effect of passion.--ED. NOTE]

The only beauty about the house is in the laundry and gardens. All the
rest reminds you of a convent of Capuchins. The chapel has not even
necessary and indispensable dignity; it is a long, narrow barn, without
arches, pillars, or decorations. The King, having wished to know
beforehand what revenue would be needed for a community of four hundred
persons, consulted M. de Louvois. That minister, accustomed to calculate
open-handedly, put in an estimate of five hundred thousand livres a year.
The foundress presented hers, which came to no more than twenty-five
thousand crowns. His Majesty adopted a middle course, and assigned a
revenue of three hundred thousand livres to his Royal House of Saint Cyr.

The foundress, foreseeing the financial embarrassments which have
supervened later, conceived the idea of making the clergy (who are
childless) support the education of these three hundred and fifty young
ladies. In consequence, she cast her eyes upon the rich abbey of Saint
Denis, then vacant, and suggested it to the King, as being almost
sufficient to provide for the new establishment.

This idea astonished the prince. He found it, at first, audacious, not
to say perilous; but, on further reflection, considering that the monks
of Saint Denis live under the rule of a prior, and never see their abbot,
who is almost always a great noble and a man of the world, his Majesty
consented to suppress the said abbey in order to provide for the
children.

The monks of Saint Denis, alarmed at such an innovation (which did not,
however, affect their own goods and revenues), composed a petition in the
form of the factum that our advocates draw up in a suit. They exclaimed
in this document "on the disrepute which this innovation would bring upon
their ancient, respectable, and illustrious community. In