Buckingham hated all the French, but his chief enemy was the Bishop of Mende. This young ecclesiastic possessed a stingingly sarcastic tongue, which the favourite, who, like most vain people, detested ridicule, both hated and feared. The former had, besides, a malicious habit of insisting with the most courtly grace upon long conversations in the French tongue, by which means the Englishman, who was not a perfect linguist, appeared, to his infinite chagrin, to disadvantage by the side of his nimble-tongued adversary. Nor did the Bishop confine himself to words. Secure in the favour of Richelieu he dared to oppose the Duke when that nobleman induced the King to appoint his wife, his sister,[39] and his niece _dames du lit_ to the Queen. Henrietta, though she pointed out that already she had three ladies in place of the two who had served her mother-in-law, yet weary of opposition, would have given in, and perhaps the French Ambassadors, who were still in England and to whom the matter was referred, might also have been won over by the soft speeches of Buckingham. But the watchful Bishop was not thus to be tricked. He represented so strongly the danger of placing "Huguenot" ladies near the person of the young Queen, and spoke so earnestly of the scandal which such a proceeding would occasion among the Catholics both of England and the Continent, that the favourite's ambitious intrigues were defeated. He was unused to such checks, and Tillières was probably right in seeing in this incident the cause of his hatred to the man who had thus foiled him.