So much intelligence and of such a kind, joined to such vivacity, sensibility, and passion, rendered his education difficult.  But God, who is the master of all hearts, and whose divine spirit breathes where he wishes, worked a miracle on this prince between his eighteenth and twentieth years.  From this abyss he came out affable, gentle, humane, moderate, patient, modest, penitent, and humble; and austere, even more than harmonised with his position.  Devoted to his duties, feeling them to be immense, he thought only how to unite the duties of son and subject with those he saw to be destined for himself.  The shortness of each day was his only sorrow.  All his force, all his consolation, was in prayer and pious reading.  He clung with joy to the cross of his Saviour, repenting sincerely of his past pride.  The King, with his outside devotion, soon saw with secret displeasure his own life censured by that of a prince so young, who refused himself a new desk in order to give the money it would cost to the poor, and who did not care to accept some new gilding with which it was proposed to furnish his little room.  Madame la Duchesse de Bourgogne, alarmed at so austere a spouse, left nothing undone in order to soften him.  Her charms, with which he was smitten, the cunning and the unbridled importunities of the young ladies of her suite, disguised in a hundred different forms—­the attraction of parties and pleasures to which he was far from insensible, all were displayed every day..  But for a long time he behaved not like a prince but like a novice.  On one occasion he refused to be present at a ball on Twelfth Night, and in various ways made himself ridiculous at Court.  In due time, however, he comprehended that the faithful performance of the duties proper to the state in which he had been placed, would be the conduct most agreeable to God.  The bark of the tree, little by little, grew softer without affecting the solidity of the trunk.  He applied himself to the studies which were necessary, in order to instruct himself in public affairs, and at the same time he lent himself more to the world, doing so with so much grace, with such a natural air, that everybody soon began to grow reconciled to him.

The discernment of this prince was such, that, like the bee, he gathered the most perfect substance from the best and most beautiful flowers.  He tried to fathom men, to draw from them the instruction and the light that he could hope for.  He conferred sometimes, but rarely, with others besides his chosen few.  I was the only one, not of that number, who had complete access to him; with me he opened his heart upon the present and the future with confidence, with sageness, with discretion.  A volume would not describe sufficiently my private interviews with this prince, what love of good! what forgetfulness of self! what researches! what fruit! what purity of purpose!—­May I say it? what reflection of the divinity in that mind, candid, simple, strong, which as much as is possible here below had preserved the image of its maker!