It was at this time that the child, Armand de Rancé, was made Abbé, and affairs at la Trappe continued to fall from bad to worse. As de Rancé grew up, among many benefices conferred on him, he was appointed Almoner to the Duke of Orléans, and spent most of his time in a whirl of dissipation in the Courtly circles in Paris. His splendid entertainments, his magnificent house, the trappings of his horses, especially those of the chase, were the talk of Paris, and his daring intrigues startled even the licence indulged in by the society he moved in. In this circle de Rancé specially singled out the stepmother of the Duchesse de Chevreuse, Madame de Montbazon, a woman as notorious for her profligacy and unscrupulous character as she was physically beautiful. After a time spent in banishment at Touraine, she had been permitted to return to her Paris home, and de Rancé, who had been absent for a short time, returning to Paris, hastened to call upon her. Arrived at the house, he found it deserted, and passing in by an open door, he hurried along the silent passages, calling for the servants and upon her name, but there was no response. At last he reached the door of her apartments, and rushing across the anteroom, he flung aside the _portières_ of her bedchamber. An open, trestle-supported coffin, across which a sheet lay carelessly flung, met his eyes, and turning from it to the table close by, the decapitated head of Madame de Montbazon confronted him. Momentarily he failed to recognise the features of the ghastly object; for the face was blurred with the ravages of smallpox. The fell disease had attacked Madame de Montbazon, and she had died of it. The body and head were being prepared for embalming, and for this end—or as some versions of the tale tell, because the coffin had not been made long enough—the head had been cut off, and placed upon the table. The silent horror of this ghastly experience carried an eloquence beyond all power of words to the heart of de Rancé. Swayed by a revulsion of feeling, naturally sensitive and imaginative, he looked back upon his past life with loathing. The hollowness of worldly pleasures, and uncertainties of a worldly existence were yet still more deeply impressed upon his mind, by a serious accident he suffered in the hunting-field, and by the death of his patron, the Duc d’Orléans. All seemed vanity.