everybody, even women, asked for it. The King spoke of it to several of
his Court, asked if they had read it; the most sagacious early saw how
much it was protected; it was the sole historical book the King and
Madame de Maintenon had ever spoken of. Thus the work appeared at
Versailles upon every table, nothing else was talked about, marvellous
eulogies were lavished upon it, which were sometimes comical in the
mouths of persons either very ignorant, or who, incapable of reading,
pretended to read and relish this book.

But this surprising success did not last. People perceived that this
history, which so cleverly unravelled the remote part, gave but a meagre
account of modern days, except in so far as their military operations
were concerned; of which even the minutest details were recorded. Of
negotiations, cabals, Court intrigues, portraits, elevations, falls, and
the main springs of events, there was not a word in all the work, except
briefly, dryly, and with precision as in the gazettes, often more
superficially. Upon legal matters, public ceremonies, fetes of different
times, there was also silence at the best, the same laconism; and when we
come to the affairs of Rome and of the League, it is a pleasure to see
the author glide over that dangerous ice on his Jesuit skates!

In due time critics condemned the work which, after so much applause, was
recognised as a very wretched history, which had very industriously and
very fraudulently answered the purpose for which it was written. It fell
to the ground then; learned men wrote against it; but the principal and
delicate point of the work was scarcely touched in France with the pen,
so great was the danger.

Father Daniel obtained two thousand francs' pension for his history,--
a prodigious recompense,--with a title of Historiographer of France. He