“My good Louise,” I replied to the amiable Carmelite, “your wise counsels touch me, persuade me, and are nothing but the truth.  But in listening to you I feel overwhelmed; and that strength which you knew how to gain, and show to the world, your former companion will never possess.

“I see with astonished eyes the supernatural calm which reigns in your countenance; your health seems to me a prodigy, your beauty was never so ravishing; but this barbarous garb pierces me to the heart.

“The King does not yet hate me; he shows me even a remnant of respect, with which he would colour his indifference.  Permit me to ask from him for you an abbey like that of Fontevrault, where the felicities of sanctuary and of the world are all in the power of my sister.  He will ask nothing better than to take you out, be assured.”

“Speak to him of me,” answered Louise; “I do not oppose that; but leave me until the end the role of obedience and humility that his fault and mine impose on me.  Why should he wish that I should command others,—­I who did not know how to command myself at an epoch when my innocence was so dear to me, and when I knew that, in losing that, one is lost?”

As she 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.”