e would have laughed sadly enough if he could have seen how right he
was. On the first night that Anne slept in the abbey, she laid a cloth
on a table in her cell, and tried to make it look a little like the
dressing-table she had left in Paris. Angelique happened to pass the
open door on her way to the chapel, and, smiling to herself, quietly
stripped the table. Some hours later she went by again, and over it was
spread a white handkerchief. This she also removed, but, leaving Anne to
apply the lesson, she did not make any remark, and sent her to clean out
the fowl-house.

* * * * *

By this time the eyes of the world had been turned to Port Royal, and to
the strange spectacle of a girl who, possessed of every talent which
would enable her to shine in society, had deliberately chosen the worst
of everything, and had induced her nuns to choose it too. Possibly the
quiet and useful life led by the Port Royal sisters may have made the
gaieties and disorders of the other convents look even blacker than
before; but however that may be, when Angelique was about twenty-six a
most difficult and disagreeable piece of work was put into her hands.

The king, Louis XIII., a very different man from his father, Henry IV.,
had determined to put an end to the state of things that prevailed, and
resolved to begin with Maubuisson.

Now nobody had ever attempted to interfere with madame d'Estrees, who
was still abbess, and when the abbot of Citeaux, her superior, informed
her that in obedience to the king's commands he proposed to come over
and inspect Maubuisson, she was extremely angry. Without caring for the
consequences, she locked up in a cell two monks who had brought the
message, and kept them without food for some days; after which she
roughly bade them return whence they came, and thought no more about the
matter.

For two years the affair rested where it was; then the king again turned
his attention to Maubuisson, and wrote to the abbot of Citeaux inquiring
why his previous orders had not been carried out, bidding him send an
officer at once and obtain an exact report of the conduct of the nuns
and the abbess.

The commissioner, monsieur Deruptis, arrived with three or four men at
Maubuisson, and congratulated themselves when they found the doors flung
wide and they were invited to enter.

'The reverend mother is too unwell to see anyone to-day,' said the nun
who admitted them, 'but she ha