of taking the veil.  I went to Madame Victoire; there I heard that the King alone had been acquainted with Madame Louise’s project; that he had kept it faithfully secret, and that, having long previously opposed her wish, he had only on the preceding evening sent her his consent; that she had gone alone into the convent, where she was expected; and that a few minutes afterwards she had made her appearance at the grating, to show to the Princesse de Guistel, who had accompanied her to the convent gate, and to her equerry, the King’s order to leave her in the monastery.

Upon receiving the intelligence of her sister’s departure, Madame Adelaide gave way to violent paroxysms of rage, and reproached the King bitterly for the secret, which he had thought it his duty to preserve.  Madame Victoire missed the society of her favourite sister, but she shed tears in silence only.  The first time I saw this excellent Princess after Madame Louise’s departure, I threw myself at her feet, kissed her hand, and asked her, with all the confidence of youth, whether she would quit us as Madame Louise had done.  She raised me, embraced me; and said, pointing to the lounge upon which she was extended, “Make yourself easy, my dear; I shall never have Louise’s courage.  I love the conveniences of life too well; this lounge is my destruction.”  As soon as I obtained permission to do so, I went to St. Denis to see my late mistress; she deigned to receive me with her face uncovered, in her private parlour; she told me she had just left the wash-house, and that it was her turn that day to attend to the linen.  “I much abused your youthful lungs for two years before the execution of my project,” added she.  “I knew that here I could read none but books tending to our salvation, and I wished to review all the historians that had interested me.”

She informed me that the King’s consent for her to go to St. Denis had been brought to her while I was reading; she prided herself, and with reason, upon having returned to her closet without the slightest mark of agitation, though she said she felt so keenly that she could scarcely regain her chair.  She added that moralists were right when they said that happiness does not dwell in palaces; that she had proved it; and that, if I desired to be happy, she advised me to come and enjoy a retreat in which the liveliest imagination might find full exercise in the contemplation of a better world.  I had no palace, no earthly grandeur to sacrifice to God; nothing but the bosom of a united family; and it is precisely there that the moralists whom she cited have placed true happiness.  I replied that, in private life, the absence of a beloved and cherished daughter would be too cruelly felt by her family.  The Princess said no more on the subject.

The seclusion of Madame Louise was attributed to various motives; some were unkind enough to suppose it to have been occasioned by her mortification at being, in point of rank, the last of the Princesses.  I think I penetrated the true cause.  Her aspirations were lofty; she loved everything sublime; often while I was reading she would interrupt me to exclaim, “That is beautiful! that is noble!” There was but one brilliant action that she could perform,—­to quit a palace for a cell, and rich garments for a stuff gown.  She achieved it!