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!

I saw Madame Louise two or three times more at the grating.  I was informed of her death by Louis XVI.  “My Aunt Louise,” said he to me, “your old mistress, is just dead at St. Denis.  I have this moment received intelligence of it.  Her piety and resignation were admirable, and yet the delirium of my good aunt recalled to her recollection that she was a princess, for her last words were, ’To paradise, haste, haste, full speed.’  No doubt she thought she was again giving orders to her equerry.”

[The retirement of Madame Louise, and her removal from Court, had only served to give her up entirely to the intrigues of the clergy.  She received incessant visits from bishops, archbishops, and ambitious priests of every rank; she prevailed on the King, her father, to grant many ecclesiastical preferments, and probably looked forward to playing an important part when the King, weary of his licentious course of life, should begin to think of religion.  This, perhaps, might have been the case had not a sudden and unexpected death put an end to his career.  The project of Madame Louise fell to the ground in consequence of this event.  She remained in her convent, whence she continued to solicit favours, as I knew from the complaints of the Queen, who often said to me, “Here is another letter from my Aunt Louise.  She is certainly the most intriguing little Carmelite in the kingdom.”  The Court went to visit her about three times a year, and I recollect that the Queen, intending to take her daughter there, ordered me to get a doll dressed like a Carmelite for her, that the young Princess might be accustomed, before she went into the convent, to the habit of her aunt, the nun.—­Madame Campan]

Madame Victoire, good, sweet-tempered, and affable, lived with the most amiable simplicity in a society wherein she was much caressed; she was adored by her household.  Without quitting Versailles, without sacrificing her easy chair, she fulfilled the duties of religion with punctuality, gave to the poor all she possessed, and strictly observed Lent and the fasts.  The table of Mesdames acquired a reputation for dishes of abstinence, spread abroad by the assiduous parasites at that of their maitre d’hotel.  Madame Victoire was not indifferent to good living, but she had the most religious scruples respecting dishes of which it was allowable to partake at penitential times.  I saw her one day exceedingly tormented