Do not despise, then, to sound the character of this king ever and again, and be certain you will always find in him some new hidden recess, some surprising peculiarity.

We have spoken of him as a husband and the father of a family, but of his religious and political standing I have as yet told you nothing.

And yet that, my child, is the principal point in his whole character.
"In the first place, then, Jane, I will tell you a secret.

The king, who has constituted himself high-priest of his Church--whom the pope once called 'the Knight of the Truth and the Faith'-- the king has at the bottom of his heart no religion.

He is a wavering reed, which the wind turns this way to-day, and that way to-morrow.