persons, consulted M. de Louvois. That minister, accustomed to calculate
open-handedly, put in an estimate of five hundred thousand livres a year.
The foundress presented hers, which came to no more than twenty-five
thousand crowns. His Majesty adopted a middle course, and assigned a
revenue of three hundred thousand livres to his Royal House of Saint Cyr.

The foundress, foreseeing the financial embarrassments which have
supervened later, conceived the idea of making the clergy (who are
childless) support the education of these three hundred and fifty young
ladies. In consequence, she cast her eyes upon the rich abbey of Saint
Denis, then vacant, and suggested it to the King, as being almost
sufficient to provide for the new establishment.

This idea astonished the prince. He found it, at first, audacious, not
to say perilous; but, on further reflection, considering that the monks
of Saint Denis live under the rule of a prior, and never see their abbot,
who is almost always a great noble and a man of the world, his Majesty
consented to suppress the said abbey in order to provide for the
children.

The monks of Saint Denis, alarmed at such an innovation (which did not,
however, affect their own goods and revenues), composed a petition in the
form of the factum that our advocates draw up in a suit. They exclaimed
in this document "on the disrepute which this innovation would bring upon
their ancient, respectable, and illustrious community. In suppressing
the title of Abbot of Saint Denis," they said further, "your Majesty, in
reality, suppresses our abbey; and if our abbey is reduced to nothing,
our basilica, where the Kings, your ancestors, lie, will be no more than
a royal church, and will cease to be abbatial."