"Madame, who is your inside confessor?"
"Madame," replied Madame de Coislin, "I know nothing about my inside confessor; I only know that my confessor is in the inside of his confessional."
Thereupon the two ladies saw each other no more.
Madame de Coislin prided herself on having introduced a novelty at Court, the fashion of floating chignons, in spite of Queen Marie Leczinska[668], who was very pious and who opposed this dangerous innovation. She held that formerly no genteel person would ever have thought of paying her doctor. Crying out against the plentifulness of women's linen:
"That smacks of the upstart," she said; "we women of the Court had only two shifts: when they were worn out, we renewed them; we were dressed in silk gowns, and we did not look like grisettes, like the young ladies of nowadays."
Madame Suard[669], who lived in the Rue Royale, had a cock whose crowing annoyed Madame de Coislin. She wrote to Madame Suard:
"Madame, have your cock's throat cut."
Madame Suard sent back the messenger with this note:
"Madame, I have the honour to reply to you that I shall not have my cock's throat cut."
The correspondence went no further. Madame de Coislin said to Madame de Chateaubriand: