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 slacken my ardour.  I got away quite often to cast an eye over the work, and ordered my architect to second my impatience and spur on the numerous workmen.

The rumour was current in Paris that the example of “Soeur Louise” had touched me, and that I was going to take the veil in my convent.  I took no notice of this fickle public, and persisted wisely in my plan.

The unexpected and almost sudden decease of Mademoiselle de Fontanges had singularly moved the King.  Extraordinary and almost incredible to relate, he was for a whole week absent from the Council.  His eyes had shed so many tears that they were swollen and unrecognisable.  He shunned the occasions when there was an assembly, buried himself in his private apartments or in his groves, and resembled, in every trait, Orpheus weeping for his fair Eurydice, and refusing to be consoled.

I should be false to others and to myself if I were to say that his extreme grief excited my compassion; but I should equally belie the truth if I gave it to be understood that his “widowhood” gave me pleasure, and that I congratulated myself on his sorrow and bitterness.

He came to see me when he found himself presentable, and, for the first few days, I abstained from all reprisal and any allusion.  The innumerable labours of his State soon threw him, in spite of himself, into those manifold distractions which, in their nature, despise or absorb the sensibilities of the soul.  He resumed, little by little, his accustomed serenity, and, at the end of the month, appeared to have got over it.

“What,” he asked me, “are those buildings with which you are busy in Paris, opposite the Ladies of Belle-Chasse?  I hear of a convent; is it your intention to retire?”

“It is a ‘refuge of foresight,’” I answered him.  “Who can count upon the morrow?  And after what has befallen Mademoiselle de Fontanges, we must consider ourselves as persons already numbered, who wait only for the call.”

He sighed, and soon spoke of something else.