As she embraced me, she sighed; yet, instantly recovering herself, she made the excuse that so many ceremonious greetings and compliments had fatigued her.

It was not long before the King joined us, who said, “Madame, I never thought that there was much amusement to be got by wearing the veil.  Now, you must admit that days in a convent seem very long to any one who has wit and intelligence.”

“Sire,” replied my sister, “the first fifteen or twenty months are wearisome, I readily confess.  Then comes discouragement; after that, habit; and then one grows resigned to one’s fetters from the mere pleasure of existence.”

“Did you meet with any good friends among your associates?”

“In such assemblies,” rejoined the Abbess, “one can form no attachment or durable friendship.  The reason for this is simple.  If the companion you choose is religious in all sincerity, she is perforce a slave to every little rule and regulation, and to her it would seem like defrauding the Deity to give affection to any one but to Him.  If, by mischance, you meet with some one of sensitive temperament, with a bright intellect that matches your own, you lay yourself open to be the mournful sharer of her griefs, doubts, and regrets, and her depression reacts upon you; her sorrow makes your melancholy return.  Privation conjures up countless illusions and every chimera imaginable, so that the peaceful retreat of virgins of the Lord becomes a veritable hell, peopled by phantoms that groan in torture!”

“Oh, madame!” exclaimed the King.  “What a picture is this!  What a spectacle you present to our view!”

“Fortunately,” continued Mademoiselle de Mortemart, “in convents girls of intelligence are all too rare.  The greater number of them are colourless persons, devoid of imagination or fire.  To exiles like these, any country, any climate would seem good; to flaccid, crushed natures of this type, every belief would seem authoritative, every religion holy and divine.  Fifteen hundred years ago these nuns would have made excellent vestal virgins, watchful and resigned.  What they need is abstinence, prohibitions, thwartings, things contrary to nature.  By conforming to most rigorous rules, they consider themselves suffering beings who deserve heavy recompense; and the Carmelite or Trappist sister, who macerates herself by the hair-shirt or the cilex, would look upon God as a false or wicked Being, if, after such cruel torment, He did not promptly open to her the gates of Paradise.

“Sire,” added the Abbess de Fontevrault, “I have three nuns in my convent who take the Holy Communion every other day, and whom my predecessor could never bring herself to absolve for some old piece of nonsense of twenty years back.”

“Do you think you will be able to manage them, madame?” asked the King, laughing.

“I am afraid not,” replied my sister.  “Those are three whom one could never manage, and your Majesty on the throne may possibly have fewer difficulties to deal with than the abbess or the prior of a convent.”