His first effort, the Refutation of the Catechism, recommended him to the notice of the Queen-Mother; and the favour which he now enjoyed at court was further increased by the fame of his eloquence in the pulpit, which he had frequent opportunities of displaying at Paris, whither he was called from time to time by ecclesiastical business. He was summoned to preach at the chapel of the Louvre before Louis XIV., who was pleased to express, in a letter to Bossuet’s father, the great delight which he received from the sermons of his son; for the versatile taste of the great monarch enabled him in one hour to recreate himself with the wit and beauty of his mistresses, and in the next to listen with undiminished pleasure to the exhortations of a Christian pastor. But Bossuet had still stronger claims on the gratitude of Louis by converting to the Roman Catholic faith the celebrated Turenne. This victory is said to have been achieved by his well-known Exposition, written in the year 1668, and published in 1671. So great was his influence at this time, that he was requested by the Archbishop of Paris to interfere in one of those many disputes which the Papal decrees against the tenets of Jansenius occasioned. The nuns of Port-Royal, who were attached to the doctrine and discipline of the Jansenists, were required to subscribe the celebrated Formulary, which selected for condemnation five propositions said to be contained in a certain huge work of Jansenius. Those excellent women modestly submitted, that they were ready to accept any doctrine propounded by the Church, and even to affix their names to the condemnation of the obnoxious propositions; but that they could not assert that these propositions were to be found in a book which they had never seen. In this difficulty the assistance of Bossuet was requested, who, after several conferences, wrote a long letter to the refractory nuns, highly commended for its acute logic and sound divinity. Much of the logic and divinity was probably thrown away upon the persons for whose use they were intended; but there was one part of the letter sufficiently intelligible. He congratulated them on their total exemption from all obligation to examine, and from the task of self-guidance; and assured them that it was their bounden duty, as well as their happy privilege, to subscribe and assent to every thing which was placed before them by authority. The nuns were not convinced. They escaped however for the present; but in the end they paid dearly for their passive resistance to the decision of Pope Alexander VII. on a matter of fact. In the year 1669, Bossuet was promoted to the bishopric of Condom, which he resigned the following year on being appointed to the important office of Preceptor to the Dauphin.