suppressing
the title of Abbot of Saint Denis," they said further, "your Majesty, in
reality, suppresses our abbey; and if our abbey is reduced to nothing,
our basilica, where the Kings, your ancestors, lie, will be no more than
a royal church, and will cease to be abbatial."

Further on, this petition said: "Sire, may it please your Majesty, whose
eyes can see so far, to appreciate this innovation in all its terrible
consequences. By striking to-day dissolution and death into the first
abbey of your kingdom, do you not fear to leave behind you a great and
sinister precedent? . . . What Louis the Great has looked upon as
possible will seem righteous and necessary to your successors; and it
will happen, maybe, before long, that the thirst for conquests and the
needs of the State (those constant and familiar pretexts of ministers)
will authorise some political Attila to extend your work, and wreak
destruction upon the tabernacle by depriving it of the splendour which is
its due, and which sustains it."

Madame de Maintenon, to whom this affair was entrusted, summoned the
administrative monks of Saint Denis to Versailles. She received them
with her agreeable and seductive courtesy, and, putting on her dulcet and
fluted voice, said to them that their alarm was without foundation; that
his Majesty did not suppress their abbey; that he simply took it from the
male sex to give it to the female, seeing that the Salic law never
included the dignities of the Church nor her revenues.

"The King leaves you," she added, "those immense and prodigious treasures
of Saint Denis, more ancient, perhaps, than the Oriflamme. That is your
finest property, your true and illustrious glory. In general, your
abbots have been, to this very day, unknown to you. Do you find,
gentlemen, that religion was more honoured and respected when men of
battle, covered with murders and other crimes, were called Abbots of
Saint Denis? Beneath the government of the King such nominations would
never have affected the Church; and after the present M. le Chevalier de
Lorraine, we shall hear no more of nominating an abbot-commandant on the
steps of the Opera.

"Our little girls are cherubim and seraphim, occupied unceasingly with
the praise of the Lord. I recommend them to your holy prayers, and you
can count on theirs."

With this compliment she dismissed the monks, and what she had resolved
on was carried out.

The King, who all his life had loved children