wish, in consequence of the tempers
and jealousies of Madame de Montespan, who felt herself judged and
condemned by her rival's repentance. Attempts were made to turn Madame
de La Valliere from her inclination for the Carmelites: "Madame," said
Madame Scarron to her one day, "here are you one blaze of gold: have you
really considered that at the Carmelites' before long, you will have to
wear serge?" She, however, persisted. She was already practising in
secret the austerities of the convent. "God has laid in this heart the
foundation of great things," said Bossuet, who supported her in her
conflict: "the world puts great hinderances in her way and God great
mercies; I have hopes that God will prevail; the uprightness of her heart
will carry everything."

[Illustration: Madame de la Valliere----10]

"When I am in trouble at the Carmelites'," said Madame de La Valliere, as
at last she quitted the court, "I will think of what those people have
made me suffer." "The world itself makes us sick of the world," said
Bossuet in the sermon he preached on the day of her taking the dress;
"its attractions have enough of illusion, its favors enough of
inconstancy, its rebuffs enough of bitterness, there is enough of
injustice and perfidy in the dealings of men, enough of unevenness and
capriciousness in their intractable and contradictory humors--there is
enough of it all, without doubt, to disgust us." "She was dead to me the
day she entered the Carmelites," said the king, thirty-five years later,
when the modest and fervent nun expired at last, in 1710, at her convent,
without having ever relaxed the severities of her penance. He had
married the daughter she had given him to the Prince of Conti.
"Everybody has been to pay compliments to this saintly Carmelite," says
Madame de Sevigne, without appearing to perceive the singularity of the
alliance between words and ideas; "I was there too with Mademoiselle.
The Prince of Conti detained her in the parlor. What an angel appeared
to me at last! She had to my eyes all the charms we had seen heretofore.
I did not find her either puffy or sallow; she is less thin, though, and
more happy-looking. She has those same eyes of hers, and the same
expression; austerity; bad living, and little sleep have not made them
hollow or dull; that singular dress takes away nothing of the easy grace
and easy bearing. As for modesty, she is no grander than when she
presented to the world a princ