in my
opinion much finer than Montespan's, and her whole deportment was
unassuming. She was slightly lame, but not so much as to impair her
appearance.

When I first arrived in France she had not retired to the convent, but
was still in the Court. We became and continued very intimate until she
took the veil. I was deeply affected when this charming person took that
resolution; and, at the moment when the funeral pall was thrown over her,
I shed so many tears that I could see no more. She visited me after the
ceremony, and told me that I should rather congratulate than weep for
her, for that from that moment her happiness was to begin: she added that
she should never forget the kindness and friendship I had displayed
towards her, and which was so much more than she deserved. A short time
afterwards I went to see her. I was curious to know why she had remained
so long in the character of an attendant to Montespan. She told me that
God had touched her heart, and made her sensible of her crimes; that she
felt she ought to perform a penitence, and suffer that which would be
most painful to her, which was to love the King, and to be despised by
him; that for the three years after the King had ceased to love her she
had suffered the torments of the damned, and that she offered her sorrows
to Heaven as the expiation of her sins; and as her sins had been public,
so should be her repentance. She said she knew very well that she had
been taken for a fool, who was not sensible of anything; but that at the
very period she alluded to she suffered most, and continued to do so
until God inspired her with the resolution to abandon everything, and to
serve Him alone, which she had since put into execution; but that now she
considered herself unworthy, on account of her past life, to live in the
society of persons as pure and pious as the Carmelite Sisters. All this
evidently came from the heart.

From the time she became professed, she was entirely devoted to Heaven.
I often told her that she had only transposed her love, and had given to
God that which had formerly been the King's. She has said frequently
that if the King should come into the convent she would refuse to see
him, and would hide herself so that he could not find her. She was,
however, spared this pain, for the King not only never went, but seemed
to have forgotten her, as if he had never known her.

To accuse La Valliere of loving any one besides the King w