Bossuet

If we can imagine Ninon de l'Enclos at a time when the rank and splendour of Parisian society thronged her drawing-rooms, reckoning a Bossuet or a Fénelon among her followers—if we can imagine these prelates publicly advising her about the duties of her profession, and the means of attaching the affections of her lovers—we shall have conceived a relation scarcely more strange than that which existed between Socrates and the courtesan Theodota.

You know Monsieur Bossuet, of course.

Bossuet, however, was much more politic, and resisted all Pelisson's efforts to introduce such topics, by cutting across them immediately, and turning the conversation to something less evidently applicable to the Count de Morseiul.

"With deep and profound respect for your Majesty, with much veneration and regard for Monsieur Bossuet, and with all the advantage of being even now reading some of his works upon religion, I should be deceiving your Majesty, I should be wronging myself, I should be showing myself unworthy of the high opinion which Monsieur de Meaux has expressed of me, if I did not clearly and distinctly state that I see no likelihood whatsoever of my changing opinions instilled into me in infancy."

He added, that he had heard the young Count and the old one too say a thousand times, that some of the gentlemen he mentioned had done as much to prevent the Protestants from returning to the mother church, as Monsieur Bossuet had done to bring them back to it.