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702 The copy of these letters were shewn to every body, and by this farce she became reconciled to the church. The capital objection to her admission was removed, and the queen desisted from any farther opposition.

When that attempt was made by Damien on the king's life, in consequence of which his death was expected, a powerful party was formed, to forbid her the presence. The bishop, who attended the king, urged it as a matter of conscience. Accordingly, on presenting herself at the chamber door, she had the mortification to have it shut upon her. The king being in five or six days perfectly recovered, paid her the first visit, and she received him all in tears. This determined him to banish from court the scrupulous bishop, and three or four more of the courtiers, who had distinguished themselves in opposing her entrance.

By this time all ranks and classes of the people concurred in hatred towards her. The Parisians, especially, could not forbear giving her the most public marks of it. Whenever she went to Paris, crowds followed her coach, hooting and showering upon her invectives and curses. It could not be pleasing to the nation, to see their greatest and ablest ministers and generals, either degraded into a servile, precarious dependence on a low obscure woman, who was constantly giving marks that she miserably mistook the artifices, by which she governed the king, for a capacity of ruling the kingdom; who had introduced a prodigious venality of offices, wholly to her own profit, and to the ruin of the nation. It was even said, that she had been in treaty with the king of Prussia, for the purchase of the sovereignty of Neufchatel, a province of Switzerland; but this report was apparently without foundation. It