"It is very kind, it is very kind of you to be so careful of my person and my kingdom. I know your meaning perfectly; but you do not know mine. You have started difficulties, to {73} your thinking, very great and considerable, and little know, that I have thought on and considered them all these eight or nine years past; and that the best resolutions for the time to come are taken from reflections on things past, which I am acquainted with better than any person whatever. You set up for mighty statesmen, and understand state affairs no more than I do the drawing the report of a cause. As to the affair of Poissy[31] things would have gone much better for the catholics, if all of you had acted your part as well as a Jesuit or two, who, very luckily, happened to be there. There clearly appeared, not the ambition, but the abilities of the Jesuits; and I do not understand how you can make those ambitious, who refuse dignities and prelacies, and make a vow to God never to aspire to any preferment; and, who seek nothing in this world besides serving all that are willing to employ them, without any {74} view of interest or recompence. If the name of Jesuit displease you, why not find fault with those, who stile themselves religious of the Trinity; why not say, that your daughters are as much religious as the nuns, called here daughters of God[32]; and that you are as much of my order of the Holy Ghost as my knights and myself? For my part, I would as soon, or rather, be called Jesuit, than Augustinian or Dominican. As to the churchmen, who except against them, ignorance has always borne a grudge to learning; and I observed, when I began to speak of re-establishing the Jesuits, that two sorts of persons opposed this design; those of the pretended reformed religion, and churchmen of irregular conduct, which has gained them still greater credit and reputation. If the Sorbonne you talk of has condemned them, it was, quite like you, without knowing them; and, if the old Sorbonne would not own them out of jealousy, the new Sorbonne is very proud of, and esteems them; if {75} they were not fixed in France before, God has reserved for me the honour, which indeed I esteem a favour, of settling them; and, if they were only provisionally admitted heretofore, they shall henceforward have a permanent settlement, both by edict and arret. The will of my predecessors kept them here, mine shall establish them. The university opposed them, either because they excelled others (witness the vast concourse of scholars to their colleges), or because they were not incorporated in the university, which will not be refused when I order it; and when I shall see that they stand in need of being better regulated. You say, that the greatest men of your parliament