This was the more cruel, as he was then going direct to Montespan’s chamber.  And yet La Valliere bore everything patiently; she was as virtuous as Montespan was vicious.  Her connection with the King might be pardoned, when it was remembered that everybody had not only advised her to it, but had even assisted to bring it about.  The King was young, handsome and gallant; she was, besides, very young; she was naturally modest, and had a very good heart.  She was very much grieved when she was made a Duchess, and her children legitimated; before that she thought no one knew she had had children.  There was an inexpressible charm in her countenance, her figure was elegant, her eyes were always in my opinion much finer than Montespan’s, and her whole deportment was unassuming.  She was slightly lame, but not so much as to impair her appearance.

When I first arrived in France she had not retired to the convent, but was still in the Court.  We became and continued very intimate until she took the veil.  I was deeply affected when this charming person took that resolution; and, at the moment when the funeral pall was thrown over her, I shed so many tears that I could see no more.  She visited me after the ceremony, and told me that I should rather congratulate than weep for her, for that from that moment her happiness was to begin:  she added that she should never forget the kindness and friendship I had displayed towards her, and which was so much more than she deserved.  A short time afterwards I went to see her.  I was curious to know why she had remained so long in the character of an attendant to Montespan.  She told me that God had touched her heart, and made her sensible of her crimes; that she felt she ought to perform a penitence, and suffer that which would be most painful to her, which was to love the King, and to be despised by him; that for the three years after the King had ceased to love her she had suffered the torments of the damned, and that she offered her sorrows to Heaven as the expiation of her sins; and as her sins had been public, so should be her repentance.  She said she knew very well that she had been taken for a fool, who was not sensible of anything; but that at the very period she alluded to she suffered most, and continued to do so until God inspired her with the resolution to abandon everything, and to serve Him alone, which she had since put into execution; but that now she considered herself unworthy, on account of her past life, to live in the society of persons as pure and pious as the Carmelite Sisters.  All this evidently came from the heart.

From the time she became professed, she was entirely devoted to Heaven.  I often told her that she had only transposed her love, and had given to God that which had formerly been the King’s.  She has said frequently that if the King should come into the convent she would refuse to see him, and would hide herself so that he could not find her.  She was, however, spared this pain, for the King not only never went, but seemed to have forgotten her, as if he had never known her.