"My mother," said La Vallière, kneeling at her feet, "I have used my liberty so ill, that I am come to give it up into your hands."
Her long and beautiful hair was cut off before she entered the convent as a novice. A year afterwards she made her profession. The Queen and the whole Court were present—all save the King and Madame de Montespan. Bossuet preached his celebrated sermon. Then the Queen Maria Theresa descended from the tribune, where she had been seated in company with La Grande Mademoiselle, and invested her with the black veil. She kissed her tenderly on the forehead as she did so.
La Vallière, now Sister Louise de la Miséricorde, made an exemplary nun. She wore horse-hair next her skin, walked barefoot along the stone pavement of the convent, and fasted rigorously. She died at sixty-six, wasted to a skeleton by her austerities. Her end was peace.
CHAPTER XXIII.
M. DE LAUZUN AND "MADEMOISELLE."
ON the line of rail to Orleans, two and a half leagues from Paris, is the station and village of Choisy le Roi. Of the enchanting abode once erected here, on the verge of grassy lawns bordering the Seine, nothing has been left by the revolution but a fragment of wall, built into a porcelain manufactory.
Choisy Mademoiselle, afterwards to be called by Louis XV. Choisy le Roi, was built by Mademoiselle de Montpensier, daughter of Gaston, Duc d'Orléans, under the advice of Le Nôtre. It was to serve as a summer retreat from the gloomy splendours of the Luxembourg; a folie where she might spend the summer heats, try her English horses, train her hounds, row on the river, tend her aviaries, and watch her flowers. Here, freed from all scrutiny, she could be imperious or devout, childish or solemn, vain or humble, as suited her fickle humour; here she could set traps to catch obstinate emperors who refused to wed, fast upon the most delicate morsels, bouder the Court when neglected by her Jupiter-cousin the King, and cultivate such remains of beauty as still lingered on her oval face and almond-shaped blue eyes.