“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.”

The King was obliged to quit us to go and see one of the ministers, but he honoured the Abbess by telling her that she was excellent company, of which he could never have too much.

My sister wished to see Madame de Maintenon and the Duc du Maine; so we visited that lady, who took a great liking to the Abbess, which was reciprocated.

When my sister saw the young Duc du Maine, she exclaimed, “How handsome he is!  Oh, sister, how fond I shall be of such a nephew!”

“Then,” said I, “you will forgive me, won’t you, for having given birth to him?”

“When I reproached you,” she answered, “I had not yet seen the King.  When one has seen him, everything is excusable and everything is right.  Embrace me, my dear sister, and do not let us forget that I owe my abbey to you, as well as my independence, fortune, and liberty.”

BOOK 3.

CHAPTER XXXV.

M. de Lauzun and Mademoiselle de Montpensier.—­Marriage of the One and
Passion of the Other.—­The King Settles a Match.—­A Secret Union.—­The
King Sends M. de Lauzun to Pignerol.—­The Life He Leads
There.—­Mademoiselle’s Liberality.—­Strange Way of Acknowledging It.

They are forever talking about the coquetry of women; men also have their coquetry, but as they show less grace and finesse than we do, they do not get half as much attention.

The Marquis de Lauzun, having one day, noticed a certain kindly feeling for him in the glances of Mademoiselle, endeavoured to seem to her every day more fascinating and agreeable.  The foolish Princess completely fell into the snare, and suddenly giving up her air of noble indifference, which till then had made her life happy, she fell madly in love with a schemer who despised and detested her.