Friday, 7 February 2014

The only non-royal people slightly superior, in his eyes, to the rank and file of his subjects, were dukes

Père Tellier,a Jesuit who came to be loathed so much that he was perhaps chiefly responsible for the expulsion of his Order from France. A sort of Rasputin, with ardent, black eyes in a false, terrible face, ignorant and wildly ambitious, he was a peasant and boasted of it to the King, who was unimpressed since in his eyes the peasantry and the bourgeoisie rated exactly the same - the only non-royal people slightly superior, in his eyes, to the rank and file of his subjects, were dukes.

N. Mitford, The Sun King (1966), 222-223

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