recommendation of proper churchmen, was a jolly, luxurious, dissolute priest, who kept an opera-dancer[199] publicly at a great expense, and lodged her in a convent. He had been a favourite of Choiseul, and remained attached to him. After the Princess had discoursed with the Bishop on her pretended business, she asked him negligently his opinion of the late revolution. He replied, it did not become him to meddle with affairs of state; but the Princess insisting, and he knowing her an enemy to Madame du Barry, ventured to open his heart to her. The consequences were, her betraying the conversation to her father, and the exile of the Bishop to an abbey: nor could the prayers of his aged mother, who begged to see him before her death, obtain a permission for him to visit her at the capital of his diocese,--a rigour of which the Chancellor gave many more and some similar instances in cases of banished presidents and _avocats_ of the Parliaments. There was another man who, though not pretending to the first place, bore, during the King’s indecision, a large share of the public aversion both from the necessity of his office and the rigour and partialities with which he executed it. This was the Abbé du Terray, the new Comptroller-General, recommended by the Chancellor. It was a considerable addition to the Comptroller’s unpopularity that he was wholly governed by a corrupt and rapacious mistress,[200]--a woman so notorious for the sale of offices, that her protector was at last forced to dismiss her; while the old Duc de la Vrillière was suffered to indulge his concubine[201] in the same infamous venality.