"My God, my heart, feeling the approach of death, apprehends Thy wrath and my eternal damnation when I consider how many sins I have committed, as well with my body as through the violent death of others, even of near relatives—all in order to reign. How I have raised my children in vice, blasphemy and perfidy, and my daughters in unchaste licence, to the point of tolerating and even authorizing a brothel at my Court. France made me what I am. I unmake her all I can. With the good King David I say—Tibi soli peccavi."[59]
"That is carrying fiction to great lengths," laughed Diana of Sauveterre. "I do not believe our good Dame Catherine is capable of repenting any of the things laid to her door by the malignant pasquil—neither her debaucheries nor any of her other evil deeds—unchastities or assassinations."
"The word 'brothel' is rather impertinent when applied to us!" Clorinde exclaimed. "They should have said, like our dear Rabelais, 'an Abbey of Thalamia,' or 'a Monastery of Cyprus, of which the Queen is the Mother Abbess.' That would have been elegant—without doing violence to the truth. A 'brothel'—fie! fie! Nasty word! We are the priestesses of Venus—only that!"
"I was not aware, dearest, that you had become a model of prudishness!" returned Blanche of Verceil with exquisite mockery. "When you ply a trade you must be willing to accept its name, and be indifferent to the word with which it is designated;" and she proceeded to read:
"Manifesto of the Maids of Honor.
"Oh! Oh! Oh! My God! What is to become of us, Lord! Oh, what will be of us, if Thou dost not extend to us Thy vast, very vast mercy! We cry out to Thee in a loud voice that it may please Thee to forgive us the many carnal sins we have committed with Kings, Cardinals, Princes, knights, abbots, preachers, poets, musicians and all manner of other folks of all conditions, trades and quality, down to muleteers, pages and lackeys, and even further down—people corroded with disease and soaked in preservatives! Therefore do we say with the good Madam Villequier: 'Oh, Lord, mercy! Grant us mercy! And if we can not find a husband, let us join the Order of the Magdalens!'
"Done at Chercheau, voyage to Nerac.
"Signed, CUCUFIN.
"(With the permission of Monsignor the Archbishop of Lyons.)"[60]
Such was the cynicism and moral turpitude of the wretched girls, corrupted and gangrened to the core as they were since early childhood by the perversions of an infamous court and the example as well as the advice of Catherine De Medici, that this scorching satire, more than any of the other pasquils, provoked the boundless hilarity of the "Flying Squadron." All sense of decorum was blotted out. Anna Bell alone blushed and dropped her eyes.