at Lyons, in the languors of convalescence, the king first remarked her blooming and at the same time severe beauty, and her air of nobility and modesty; and it was not long before the whole court knew that he had remarked her, for his first care, at the sermon, was to send the young maid of honor the velvet cushion on which he knelt for her to sit upon.  Mdlle. d’Hautefort declined it, and remained seated, like her companions, on the ground; but henceforth the courtiers’ eyes were riveted on her movements, on the interminable conversations in which she was detained by the king, on his jealousies, his tiffs, and his reconciliations.  After their quarrels, the king would pass the greater part of the day in writing out what he had said to Mdlle. d’Hautefort and what she had replied to him.  At his death, his desk was found full of these singular reports of the most innocent, but also most stormy and most troublesome love-affair that ever was.  The king was especially jealous of Mdlle. d’Hautefort’s passionate devotion to the queen her mistress, Anne of Austria.  “You love an ingrate,” he said, “and you will see how she will repay your services.”  Richelieu had been unable to win Mdlle. d’Hautefort; and he did his best to embitter the tiff which separated her from the king in 1635.  But Louis XIII. had learned the charm of confidence and intimacy; and he turned to Louise de La Fayette, a charming girl of seventeen, who was as virtuous as Mdlle. d’Hautefort, but more gentle and tender than she, and who gave her heart in all guilelessness to that king so powerful, so a-weary, and so melancholy at the very climax of his reign.  Happily for Richelieu, he had a means, more certain than even Mdlle. d’Hautefort’s pride, of separating her from Louis XIII.; Mdlle. de La Fayette, whilst quite a child, had serious ideas of becoming a nun; and scruples about being false to her vocation troubled her at court, and even in those conversations in which she reproached herself with taking too much pleasure, Father Coussin, her confessor, who was also the king’s, sought to quiet her conscience; he hoped much from the influence she could exercise over the king; but Mdlle. de La Fayette, feeling herself troubled and perplexed, was urgent.  When the Jesuit reported to Louis XIII. the state of his fair young friend’s feelings, the king, with tears in his eyes, replied, “Though I am very sorry she is going away, nevertheless I have no desire to be an obstacle to her vocation; only let her wait until I have left for the army.”  She did not wait, however.  Their last interview took place at the queen’s, who had no liking for Mdlle. de La Fayette; and, as the king’s carriage went out of the court-yard, the young girl, leaning against the window, turned to one of her companions and said, “Alas!  I shall never see him again!” But she did see him again often for some time.  He went to see her in her convent, and “remained so long glued to her grating,” says Madame de Motteville, that Cardinal Richelieu,