I am quite sure that for a matter of a hundred crowns more, you would not like me to have anything common.

I am a beggar, as you know; in such sort that I cannot do much in the way of playing the opulent; but at any rate, when I have silver dishes, my nobility will be considerably enhanced." He succeeded, no doubt, in getting his silver dishes and his well-appointed episcopal mansion; for when, in 1614, he was elected to the states-general, he had acquired amongst the clergy and at the court of Louis XIII.

sufficient importance to be charged with the duty of speaking, in presence of the king, on the acceptance of the acts of the council of Trent, and on the restitution of certain property belonging to the Catholic church in Warn.

He made skilful use of the occasion for the purpose of still further exalting and improving the question and his own position.

He complained that for a long time past ecclesiastics had been too rarely summoned to the sovereign's councils, "as if the honor of serving God," he said, "rendered them incapable of serving the king;" he took care at the same time to make himself pleasant to the mighty ones of the hour; he praised the young king for having, on announcing his majority, asked his mother to continue to watch over France, and "to add to the august title of mother of the king that of mother of the kingdom." The post of almoner to the queen-regnant, Anne of Austria, was his reward.