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"She was dead to me the day she entered the Carmelites'," said the king, thirty-five years later, when the modest and fervent nun at last expired, in 1710, without having ever relaxed the severities of her penance. Of an entirely different type from Mlle. de La Vallière was that haughtiest and most supercilious of all French mistresses, Mme. de Montespan.
She had heard that he was religious, and immediately began to play the part of a devote so seriously, that she was seized with a violent desire to become a veritable religieuse and enter the convent of the Carmelites. She could neither eat nor sleep, and it was feared that she would fall dangerously ill. "I can only say that, during those eight days, the empire was nothing to me," she writes.
The prior of the Carmelites next advanced and made the same declaration, taking the oath in the same manner, holding the pyx over his head; and further calling down on himself and his brethren the curse of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram if they had sinned during this inquiry.
In a few feverish months, they came back for his wife. Her they placed in the nunnery of the Carmelites that prison where, but a few months before, a mob relieved the keepers of their vigils by killing all their charges. Robespierre was supreme. Now, Robespierre had come into power by undoing Danton.
While at Madrid he painted four pictures for the convent of the Carmelites, and a fine portrait of the king on horseback, with many other pictures; for these extraordinary productions he was richly rewarded, received the honor of knighthood, and was presented with the golden key.
Jesuits, Carmelites, Cordeliers, Augustins, Dominicans, have been forced to elect general vicars in France, in order no longer to communicate at Rome with their true superiors, because he would be patriarch in France, and head of the Gallican Church." "He's a schismatic! a monster!" cried several voices. "His progress, then, is apparent, gentlemen.
And so, in austerities and self-mortification she ended her days, sharing them between the Carmelites, in whose convent she had an apartment, and Port-Royal des Champs, where she had built a wing having a preference for Port-Royal. She was always naturally disposed to favour the rebellious, and these rebels, it must be remembered, were the persecuted for conscience' sake.
The horses started on a trot and took the road to the Louvre, which they entered. Before leaving the convent of the Carmelites, Henrietta had desired her daughter to attend her at the palace, which she had inhabited for a long time and which she had only left because their poverty seemed to them more difficult to bear in gilded chambers.
I will never give them occasion to say that I have been an idle and self-indulgent savant. I dedicate to Prussia my strength and my life. But here, friend, here in my cloister, which, like the Convent of the Carmelites, shall never be desecrated by a woman's foot; here we will, from time to time, forget all the pomps and glories of the world, and all its vanities.
To be at Blois, at the Carmelites, consumed by dread of having to take my vows there, a Mlle. de la Valliere, but without her prelude, and without my Renee! How could I not be sick sick unto death? How different it used to be!
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