DEATH OF PERE LA CHAISE. 7T

liked what was good wherever he found it. "When near his
eightieth year, with his head and his health still good, he
wished to retire, but the King would not hear of it. Soon
after, his faculties became worn out, and feeling this, he re-
peated his wish. The Jesuits, who perceived his failing more
than he did himself, and felt the diminution of his credit, ex-
horted him to make way for another who should have the
grace and zeal of novelty. For his part he sincerely desired
repose, and he pressed the King to allow him to take it, but all
in vain. He was obliged to bear his burthen to the very end.
Even the infirmities and the decrepitude that afflicted could
not deliver him. Decaying legs, memory extinguished, judg-
ment collapsed, all his faculties confused, strange inconveniences
for a confessor—nothing could disgust the King, and he per-
sisted in having this corpse brought to him and carrying on
customary business with it. At last, two days after a return
from Versailles, he grew much weaker, received the sacrament,
wrofce with his own hand a long letter to the King, received a
very rapid and hurried one in reply, and soon after died at five
o'clock in the morning very peaceably. His confessor asked him
two things, whether he had acted according to his conscience,
and whether he had thought of the interests and honour of the
company of Jesuits; and to both these questions he answered
satisfactorily.

The news was brought to the King as he came out of his
cabinet. He received it like a Prince accustomed to losses,
praised the P&re La Chaise for his goodness, and then said
smilingly, before all the courtiers, and quite aloud, to the two
fathers who had come to announce the death: "He was so
good that I sometimes reproached him for it, and he used to
reply to me: 'It is not I who am good; it is you who are
hard/ "

Truly the fathers and all the auditors were so surprised at
this that they lowered their eyes. The remark spread directly;
nobody was able to blame the Pfere La Chaise. He was
generally regretted, for he had done much good and never
harm except in self-defence. Mar6chal, first surgeon of the