no less.

CHAPTER XLVI.

It is time now to retrace my steps to the point from which I have been
led away in relating all the incidents which arose out of the terrible
winter and the scarcity it caused.

The Court at that time beheld the renewal of a ministry; which from the
time it had lasted was worn down to its very roots, and which was on
that account only the more agreeable to the King. On the 20th of
January, the Pere La Chaise, the confessor of the King, died at a very
advanced age. He was of good family, and his father would have been rich
had he not had a dozen children. Pere La Chaise succeeded in 1675 to
Pere Ferrier as confessor of the King, and occupied that post thirty-two
years. The festival of Easter often caused him politic absences during
the attachment of the King for Madame de Montespan. On one occasion he
sent in his place the Pere Deschamps, who bravely refused absolution.
The Pere La Chaise was of mediocre mind but of good character, just,
upright, sensible, prudent, gentle, and moderate, an enemy of informers,
and of violence of every kind. He kept clear of many scandalous
transactions, befriended the Archbishop of Cambrai as much as he could,
refused to push the Port Royal des Champs to its destruction, and always
had on his table a copy of the New Testament of Pere Quesnel, saying that
he liked what was good wherever he found it. When near his eightieth
year, with his head and his health still good, he wished to retire, but
the King would not hear of it. Soon after, his faculties became worn
out, and feeling this, he repeated his wish. The Jesuits, who perceived
his failing more than he did himself, and felt the diminution of his
credit, exhorted him to make way for another who should have the grace
and zeal of novelty. For his part he sincerely desired repose, and he
pressed the King to allow him to take it, but all in vain. He was
obliged to bear his burthen to the very end. Even the infirmities and
the decrepitude that afflicted could not deliver him. Decaying legs,
memory extinguished, judgment collapsed, all his faculties confused,
strange inconveniences for a confessor--nothing could disgust the King,
and he persisted in having this corpse brought to him and carrying on
customary business with it. At last, two days after a return from
Versailles, he grew much weaker, received the sacrament, wrote with his
own hand a long letter to the King, received a very rapid and hurried one
in