Religion was the greatest obstacle I had to surmount, for the King was very devout. He prayed regularly, and went every day to mass, but did not perform his Easter-devotions. This estrangement from the sacraments arose rather from an excess of delicacy, than a contempt for the communion. His transitory amours separated him from the sacrament, which he feared to prophane. The jesuit who enjoyed the title of his confessor, had made various attempts to conquer his delicacy upon this head. His power would then have been more extensive, as his penitent would have been more at his devotion; but Lewis XV. never submitted.
I was judged a proper instrument to hint something to the monarch upon this subject; but it was necessary that I should begin by convincing myself, in order to persuade the King. This was thought an easy matter; people of the first rank, and of considerable dignity in the church, but who shall not be named here, fearing that the Roman catholic religion might appear to lose ground to the enemies of the state, undertook this great work.
I was not much versed in this kind of matters; for the women of Paris have no more religion than what is just necessary to prevent their having none at all.
These able theologists settled it as a principle, “That scandal in a king was the greatest evil he could be guilty of: that he is the mirrour, where every one looks to see himself: that his example carries with it that of the state: that from the time the King did not commune, there were upwards of a million of subjects in France, who no longer partook of the sacraments: that the desertion from the holy table was become general,” &c. &c.
Then speaking of constitutions, they added, “That God had given power to his ministers to absolve past sins; that repentance effaced in heaven crimes committed upon earth: that the Divinity, in forming man, had been obliged to give way to his weaknesses: that we should always fulfil our christian obligations, notwithstanding the continual temptations with which the heart of man is surrounded,” &c. &c.
In a word, I saw through these maxims of the fathers of the church, that the King, in order to be a good catholic, should be regularly guilty of profanation of the sacrament once a year.
I refused taking upon myself this moral commission. I had a glimpse of those consequences which might have affected myself. This prince’s approaching the communion table, must necessarily have caused a revolution in him. I was under less apprehension for the King’s religion, than the intrigues of churchmen. The confessor was particularly to be dreaded. He is always powerful, when the monarch is frequently at his feet.
Neither did I advise the King to absent himself from the holy table. I left things just as they were.
Peace, which had restored political tranquility, of itself produced fresh divisions in the state. Churchmen, the clergy, and the parliament, who in time of war, unite themselves to the administration, to participate of public misfortunes, in their turn create them, when battles and sieges are passed: so that by a fatality, which is, perhaps, derived from the constitution itself, France must always be armed to avoid domestic quarrels; or continually wage war with herself, to prevent that of the enemy. I have heard very able politicians say, that this arises from the government’s not being sufficiently powerful to suppress divisions abroad, nor sufficiently absolute to destroy dissentions at home: a mixed state that will one day make it a prey to its enemies, or a victim to its subjects.
A trifling affair gave rise to a great misunderstanding between the court and the parliament, which was the distribution of the alms collected for the mendicants. The directors of the hospital of Paris had never yet been blamed by either the court or the city, because the war had engaged the attention of the government; but peace being restored, which gave them leisure to inspect into the minutest affairs, they at length took this into consideration.