Let me beseech you, madame, with all submission, to call now to mind the commands you were pleased to honour me with a little before your departure from Paris, that I should give you a precise account of every circumstance and accident of my life, and conceal nothing. You see, by what I have already related, that my ecclesiastical occupations were diversified and relieved, though not disfigured, by other employments of a more diverting nature. I observed a decorum in all my actions, and where I happened to make a false step some good fortune or other always retrieved it. All the ecclesiastics of the diocese wished to see me succeed my uncle in the archbishopric of Paris, but Cardinal de Richelieu was of another mind; he hated my family, and most of all my person, for the reasons already mentioned, and was still more exasperated for these two which follow.
I once told the late President de Mesmes what seems now to me very probable, though it is the reverse of what I told you some time ago, that I knew a person who had few or no failings but what were either the effect or cause of some good qualities. I then said, on the contrary, to M. de Mesmes, that Cardinal de Richelieu had not one great quality but what was the effect or cause of some greater imperfection. This, which was only ‘inter nos’, was carried to the Cardinal, I do not know by whom, under my name. You may judge of the consequences. Another thing that angered him was because I visited the President Barillon, then prisoner at Amboise, concerning remonstrances made to the Parliament, and that I should do it at a juncture which made my journey the more noticeable. Two miserable hermits and false coiners, who had some secret correspondence with M. de Vendome, did, upon some discontent or other, accuse him very falsely of having proposed to them to assassinate the Cardinal, and to give the more weight to their depositions they named all those they thought notorious in that country; Montresor and M. Barillon were of the number. Early notice of this being given me, the great love I had for the President Barillon made me take post that night to acquaint him with his danger and get him away from Amboise, which was very feasible; but he, insisting upon his innocence, rejected my proposals, defied both the accusers and their accusations, and was resolved to continue in prison. This journey of mine gave a handle to the Cardinal to tell the Bishop of Lisieux that I was a cordial friend to all his enemies.