"
"A most fit person to be intrusted with such a commission,"
replied the king; "for I have, in every instance, endeavored to
justify the wishes of this holy pillar of the church, this worthy
prelate with his double-faced politeness, towards those whom
he openly compliments, and reviles in private, just as his interest
may require it. Well! and what did you say to him?"
"That I most humbly thanked the princesses, but that the state
of my health did not permit of my visiting Chantilly for the present."
"That is all very well," answered Louis XV; "you have framed
your excuse with much generosity, which I greatly fear will meet
with a very different turn; for if you do not accompany me to
Chantilly, the report circulated will be, that the princesses have
forbidden you their presence; which my dearly beloved daughters,
whose characters I fully understand, will neither affirm nor deny
before the public, whilst in private they will vow that they
prohibited you from following them. Always excepting madame
Louise, who is an angel upon earth, as she will most assuredly be
one day in heaven, where I trust her prayers for me and mine
will be heard."
I did not at the time pay any particular attention to the latter
part of the king's discourse, for, indeed, the beginning was far
more interesting to me; but when I afterwards learnt that madame
Louise had quitted the grandeurs of Versailles for the gloom and
austerity of a convent I recollected it, and easily comprehended
that it was spoken in allusion to an event which took place some
time afterwards, and of which I shall speak in its proper place.
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