Part 1 — Lewis the XIVth’s Answer.

I Just now receiv’d your’s by a courier, who, had he not been too nimble for me, had been rewarded according to his deserts for his impudent message. But are you such a coxcomb as to imagine that the most ambitious monarch upon earth, whose power puts all the princes and states of Europe into convulsions, can be frighted at the threats of a wretch condemn’d to everlasting punishments? The insolence of your comparison, I must confess, threw me into a rage: and not reflecting at first on the impossibility of the thing, I sent immediately for Boufflers to dragoon you. But, villain! because your malice has been rampant for so many ages, must you now level it at the eldest son of the church, whom the godly Jesuits have already canoniz’d? I am not so ignorant of the history of Asia, tho’ I never read any of the books of the Maccabees; but I know you were both judge and executioner, and that there is not in the universe one monument consecrated to your glory. Thanks to the careful Jesuits, la place des victoris, is a sufficient proof that my reputation is no chimera, and my name, which is to be seen in golden characters over several monasteries, assures me of a glorious immortality. ’Tis true, to keep in favour with the church, I have compell’d a handful of obstinate fools to leave their country and estates, by forcing them to renounce their God, and implicitly take up with mine. Therefore the world has no reason to make such a noise about it. Are you mad to call Pelisson, who has read more volumes than a rabbi, and cou’d give lessons of hypocrisy to the most exquisite sect of the Pharisees, a block-head? Your torments are so great, you know not on whom to spit your venom, and my poor [5] mistress, forsooth, must suffer from your malice: Is she the worse for being born in the reign of my grandfather? Pray ask Boileau, whose sincerity has cost him many a tear, what he thinks of her. All the world knows her virtues, and that she is grown grey in the school of dissimulation and lewdness, which have render’d her so charming in the feats of love, that she pleases me more than the youngest beauty; therefore are her wrinkles the objects of my wonder, and the provocatives of my enervated limbs, instead of being antidotes; and I would not give a saint a wax-candle to make her younger. Tho’ I am seiz’d by a cancer on the shoulder, yet I am under no apprehensions, for I have given a fee to St. Damian, who will cure me of it, as well as of that nauseous malady of Naples: And I have plenipotentiaries now bribing heaven for its friendship, and a new term of years. Then ’tis in vain for Lucifer, or you, ever to expect me; and when I must leave this terrestial paradice, ’twill be with such a convoy of Masses, as will hurry me by the very gate of Purgatory, without touching there. In the mean time correct your saucy liberty, and let a monarch who wou’d scorn to entertain such a pitiful wretch as thou art for his pimp, still huff the world, and sleep quietly in his seraglio.

Versailles, July 14.

Lewis R.