Well endowed personally and mentally, and amiably disposed, Louis was admirably fitted by nature to represent the beloved and worshipped king who had maintained the spiritual liberties of his Protestant subjects, when he himself became a Catholic—since, as he had said, “_Paris vaut une Messe_.” But though his naturally grand deportment and the conviction of his own semi-divinity and sense of great-doing had wrought Louis to brilliant achievements for the State, apart from the glories of the battlefield, it is more than conceivable that he was fully conscious of his own inadequate education and rearing, to which Mazarin’s policy had limited him. Beneath all the magnificent assumption, the common sense and inner consciousness of Louis were not likely to fail, as time passed, to show him that he was but a cipher in the scheme of the universe, an atom; and under the theological direction of his Jesuit confessor, an exaggerated estimate of his own sinfulness and imperfections crushed him into melancholy and self-surrender, till he actually and honestly imagined that eternal punishment threatened, unless he humbled himself, as he did to the dust, to follow the instruction of his Jesuit confessor. Yet Madame de Maintenon herself laments that “she could never make him understand that humility was a Christian virtue.” _À qui la faute?_ His most intimate exemplar of the attribute was one more outwardly shining than profound. There have been apologists for Madame de Maintenon, and for Père la Chaise, and for these promoters of the Nantes Revocation they do not seem to be superfluous, these “_Pièces Justificatives_,” of the _gouvernante_ of the Montespan’s children, and later of their father. The Duc de St Simon, among many other writers, makes less than no extenuation; while, on the other hand, he describes Père la Chaise as a strong Jesuit, yet withal neither fanatical nor fawning—and yet more powerfully still in his favour, he says that although he advised the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he was no party to the merciless persecution by which it was followed. Forgetting, or rather ignoring, his own youth, Louis imposed rigorous discipline upon all about him. The merest peccadillo incurred possibilities of imprisonment, and only absolute impeccability being tolerated, pharisaism and hypocrisy were rampant. The royal children and grandchildren were required, on pain of utter disgrace, to make weekly confession, and no choice of a spiritual director was permitted the Grand Dauphin. To Père la Chaise, and to him alone, was committed the conscience of the Jansenist Fénelon’s pupil; and at the great annual festivals of the Church, all the members of the royal family were required to communicate publicly. The Duchess of Burgundy was sorely rebuked for a breach of this regulation.