The bull _Unigenitus_ was, says a French bishop of the time, as badly received at Paris as it would have been at Geneva, and the Jesuits prepared for the last phase of their long struggle with the Puritans. Saint Simon has left us a singular and unpleasant picture of Father Letellier discussing with him their devices for enforcing acceptance of the bull. The passion displayed by the royal confessor amazed the duke, and he was not less disgusted at the ruses by which Letellier proposed to crush his opponents. The Archbishop now condemned Quesnel, but rejected the bull, and fourteen bishops followed his example. Once more there was a violent controversy, and a letter of Letellier's was intercepted from which Noailles learned that the royal confessor was pressing Louis to send him to Rome, to be degraded by the Papacy. The ecclesiastical world seethed with passion, while France slowly fell from the proud position to which its great generals had raised it.
In the midst of this conflict, Louis XIV. died (1715); and for a time it seemed as if the reign of the Jesuits was ended. The grim Letellier was exiled from Paris, and Noailles replaced the Jesuits in the control of ecclesiastical affairs. Their enemies gathered about the Regent and pressed him to destroy the power of the Society. Philip of Orleans was, however, not the kind of man to sacrifice liberal casuists to the Puritans, and graceful preachers to stern parlementarians. A man of brilliant parts and frivolous tendencies--he had been educated in vice by the Abbé Dubois--he saw no more than a temporary political expedient in checking the Jesuits for the satisfaction of his supporters. He soon relapsed into ways of indolence and vice; and the Jesuits, gaining the ear of his unscrupulous favourites, crept back to power. Dubois desired a high ecclesiastical dignity, and the course of events very strongly confirms the suspicion that the Jesuits put at his disposal their influence in Rome. He induced Philip to compel Parlement to register the bull _Unigenitus_; and he shortly afterwards became, in spite of his notorious character, Archbishop of Cambrai and Cardinal of the Church. Other unworthy clerics were similarly promoted, and the power of Cardinal Noailles was checked. Dubois, in 1722, secured the office of confessor to the young King for a Jesuit. Noailles, who had opposed the appointment, refused canonical powers to the confessor, and a fresh intrigue ran on until Noailles died and a pro-Jesuit Archbishop was elected.