“I have always followed the impulses of my heart,” she wrote, “in easily performing a task for which that was all that was needed.  Monseigneur and Mademoiselle believe me blindly, for I have never deceived them, even in jest.  A pleasantry that a child’s mind cannot understand embarrasses him, destroys his ease and confidence, humiliates and even angers him, if he believes that he has been deceived.  Monseigneur has more need than most children of this discretion.  The directness and generosity of his character incline him to take everything seriously.  When he thinks he sees that any one is being annoyed, the one oppressed straightway becomes the object of his lively interest; he will take up his defence warmly and will not spare his rebukes; he shows on these occasions an energy quite in contrast with the natural timidity of his character.  With such a child, I have had to avoid even the shadow of injustice.  He loves Mademoiselle, is gentle, kind, attentive to her.  I have always carefully shunned for Their Royal Highnesses the little contests of childhood; however unimportant they may seem at first, they end by embittering the disposition.”

We commend to mothers and teachers the letter of the Duchess of Gontaut.  It is a veritable programme of education, conceived with high intelligence and great practical sense.  What more just than this reflection:  “The method of teaching by amusement is fashionable, and appears to me to lead to a very superficial education.  That is not what I have sought.  Let the teacher explain readily, but let him allow the pupil to take some pains, for he must learn early the difficulties of life and how to overcome them.  A child prince, exposed to flattery, runs the risk of thinking himself a prodigy.  To obviate this Monseigneur and Mademoiselle have often been subjected to little competitions with children of their age.  I have sought by this means to give them the habit of witnessing success without envy, and to gain it without vanity.”  And what a fine and noble thing is this.  “I have tried on all occasions to lead the mind of Monseigneur to the moral teaching of religion; I have used it as a restraint; I have presented it as a hope.”

The Duchess of Gontaut was proud of her pupil:—­

“It will require time,” she says, in this same letter, “kindness, and tenderness to gain the confidence of Monseigneur.  His features show his soul; he talks little of what he undergoes; he has much sensibility, but a power over himself remarkable at his age; I have seen him suffer without complaint.  The efforts that he has made to overcome a timidity that I have tried hard to conquer, have been noteworthy.  I have been able to make him understand the necessity, for a prince, of addressing strangers in a noble, gracious, and intelligible fashion.  I have always sought to remove all means and all pretext for concealing his faults; bashfulness leads imperceptibly to dissimulation and falsehood.  I am happy in affirming that Monseigneur is scrupulously truthful.  I have believed it requisite, by reason of the vivacity of his disposition, and the high destiny awaiting him, to constrain him to reflect before acting.  The word justice has a real charm for him; I have never seen a heart more loyal.”