The [mistresses of the] classes are your principal affair; the establishment is your Institute, that is the king’s intention; that is the object of your office. Never weary of preaching to your sisters the vigilance required in guarding and educating the young ladies. Do not add rules to rules; you have rules enough, but the mistresses do not read them enough. Make ceaseless attack upon the furtive quibbling that the Dames de Saint-Louis keep up about their time. They go against the will of God, the intention of their instituters and founders, and against the charity they owe to the young ladies if they leave them at times when their regulations do not oblige them to be in church. That hunger for prayer is only self-love wanting to be pleased with itself for its works, and counting as nought that which is done under rules. How can they teach young ladies that duty should be done according to the place of each person if they themselves neglect the duty of theirs, which is the care of those young ladies? A true Dame de Saint-Louis ought to contrive to be with her class at all possible moments, even at the hours when she is not obliged to be there. And yet they think they are pleasing God by making a half-hour’s orison which was not required of them, and deserting the employment of the time which He does demand in accordance with their vows! I should never end on this chapter, my dear daughter. Never give up on this point, I conjure you. It is for you to see that the rules are obeyed, and when your functions cease and you become again a simple mistress, set an example of fidelity to the others.
To Mme. de Fontaines.
April 20, 1713.
Do not let us complain, my dear sister, and fear the future; let us rather try to establish the present as best we can. You can contribute better than any one to this purpose, for you are sufficiently prudent not to vex the sisters; at the same time you will never allow the young ladies to speak in a low tone to one another. The sisters must excuse a great deal of poor talk that they will hear, and not reprove it when there is no real harm in it.
Mme. d’Auxy [this was Jeannette de Pincré, an adopted daughter of Mme. de Maintenon] is quite beside herself when she has a new gown. She consults me about the trimming; I enter into it and give her my advice, telling her that her joy and liking for adornment belongs to her age, but that youth must pass, and that I hope she will come sooner or later to better inclinations. I think that such compliance does more good than severity, which serves only to rebuff the young and make them dissimulating.
I am told that one of the little girls was scandalized in the parlour because her father talked of his breeches. That is a word in common usage. What refinement do they mean by this? Does the arrangement of the letters form an immodest word? Do they feel distress at the words “breed” or “breeze” or “breviary”? It is pitiable. Others only whisper under their breath that a woman is pregnant; do they wish to be more modest than our Lord who talked of pregnancy and childbirth, etc.? One of the young ladies stopped short when I asked her how many sacraments there were, not being willing to name marriage. She began to laugh and told me they were not allowed to name it in the convent from which she came.
What! a sacrament instituted by Jesus Christ, which he honoured with his presence, the obligations of which his Apostles explained, and which we ought to teach to our daughters, must not be named to them! These are the things that turn a convent education into ridicule. There is much more immodesty in such proceedings than there is in speaking openly of what is innocent and with which all pious books are filled. When our young ladies have passed through marriage they will know that it is not a thing to be laughed at. They ought to be accustomed to speak of it very seriously and even sadly, for I think it is the state of life in which we suffer most tribulation, even in the best marriages. They should be taught, when occasion offers, the difference between immodest words, which must never be uttered, and coarse words,—the first being sinful, the second simply against good-breeding.
Adieu, my daughter, I never can finish when it is a question of our girls and the good of the establishment.