These reliquaries
were distributed by him to his daughters, or any ladies of the
court of great acknowledged piety. When I heard of this I mentioned
it to the king, who wished at first to conceal the fact; but, as
he was no adept at falsehood or disguise, he was compelled to
admit the fact.
"I trust, sire," said I, "that you will bestow one of your
prettiest and best-arranged reliquaries on me."
"No, no," returned he, hastily, "that cannot be."
"And why not?" asked I.
"Because," answered he, "it would be sinful of me. Ask anything
else in my power to bestow, and it shall be yours."
This was no hypocrisy on the part of Louis XV, who, spite of his
somewhat irregular mode of life, professed to hold religion in
the highest honor and esteem; to all that it proscribed he paid
the submission of a child. We had ample proofs of this in the
sermons preached at Versailles by the abbe de Beauvais, afterwards
bishop of Senetz.
This ecclesiastic, filled with an inconsiderate zeal, feared not
openly to attack the king in his public discourses; he even went
so far as to interfere with many things of which he was not a
competent judge, and which by no means belonged to his jurisdiction:
in fact, there were ample grounds for sending the abbe to the
Bastille. The court openly expressed its dissatisfaction at this
audacity, and for my own part I could not avoid evincing the
lively chagrin it caused me.
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