Among the most enthusiastic supporters of the well-known French Jesuit Mis sion to China was Louis xivs legitimatized son , Louis-auguste de Bourbon ,
Duc du Maine . Joachim Bouvet S.J. ( 1656-1730 ) , one of the five Mathematiciens du Roi , wrote of him the following : " For after knowing from the discourses of Father Philippe ] Couplet [ S J , 1623-1693 ) that there were so many rare and curious things in China , he kept saying that it was necessary for French Jesuits to be sent [ there in order to obtain information specifically about it . The young duke , who by then was only fifteen years old , received the missionaries before they left for China and gave them a scientific instrument that he had made for his own use . Perhaps the adolescent noble's curiosity for that faraway and foreign land was what compelled him to commission from art merchant Monsieur d'isrode an unusually rich and expensive series of eight tapestries known as L'histoire de lempereur de la Chine ( The Story of the Emperor of Chi na ) , produced by the exquisite Beauvais Tapestry Manufactory under the direc tion of Philippe Behagle ( 1641-1705 ) .