said these words two nuns came to announce her Serene Highness,
that is to say, her daughter, the Princesse de Conti. I prayed Madame de
la Valliere to keep between ourselves the communications that had just
taken place in the intimacy of confidence. She promised me with her
usual candour. I made a profound reverence to the daughter, embraced the
mother weeping, and regained my carriage, which the Princess must have
remarked on entering.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Reflections.--The Future.--The Refuge of Foresight.--Community of Saint
Joseph.--Wicked Saying of Bossuet.

I wept much during the journey; and to save the spectacle of my grief
from the passers-by, I was at the pains to lower the curtains. I passed
over in my mind all that the Duchess had said to me. It was very easy
for me to understand that the monarch's heart had escaped me, and that,
owing to his character, all resistance, all contradiction would be vain.
The figure, as it had been supernumerary and on sufferance, which the
Duchess had made in the midst of the Court when she ceased to be loved,
returned to my memory completely, and I felt I had not the courage to
drink a similar cup of humiliation.

I reminded myself of what the prince had told me several times in those
days when his keen affection for me led him to wish for my happiness,
even in the future,--even after his death, if I were destined to survive
him.

"You ought," he said to me, at those moments, "you ought to choose and
assure yourself beforehand of an honourable retreat; for it is rarely
that a king accords his respect or his good-will to the beloved
confidante of his predecessor."

Not wishing to ask a refuge of any one, but, on the contrary, being
greatly set upon ruling in my own house, I resolved to build myself, not
a formal convent like Val-de-Grace or Fontevrault, but a pretty little
community, whose nuns, few in number, would owe me their entire
existence, which would necessarily attach them to all my interests. I
held to this idea. I charged my intendant to seek for me a site spacious
enough for my enterprise; and when he had found it, had showed it to me,
and had satisfied me with it, I had what rambling buildings there were
pulled down, and began, with a sort of joy, the excavations and
foundations.

The first blow of the hammer was struck, by some inconceivable fortuity,
at the moment when the Duchesse de Fontanges expired. Her death did not
weaken my resolutions nor sl