Can you conceive it?
He dispute with me! A petty priestling, who has no other merit than a little lively small-talk and a cavalier air.
Fortunately, the husband himself took care to get rid of him." Father Joseph, who listened with equal impatience to his master when he spoke of his 'bonnes fortunes' or of his verses, made, however, a grimace which he meant to be very sly and insinuating, but which was simply ugly and awkward; he fancied that the expression of his mouth, twisted about like a monkey's, conveyed, "Ah! who can resist your Eminence ?" But his Eminence only read there, "I am a clown who knows nothing of the great world"; and, without changing his voice, he suddenly said, taking up a despatch from the table: "The Duc de Rohan is dead, that is good news; the Huguenots are ruined.
He is a lucky man.

I had him condemned by the Parliament of Toulouse to be torn in pieces by four horses, and here he dies quietly on the battlefield of Rheinfeld.

But what matters?
The result is the same.
Another great head is laid low! How they have fallen since that of Montmorency! I now see hardly any that do not bow before me.

We have already punished almost all our dupes of Versailles; assuredly they have nothing with which to reproach me.

I simply exercise against them the law of retaliation, treating them as they would have treated me in the council of the Queen-mother.