You can show what I write to you to whom you please; would to God it were good enough that all might draw some profit from it.
To a young lady in class Blue.
December, 1690.
I have heard of your disobedience to Mme. de Labarre, and I have stopped the punishment they intended to give you. How can you suppose that we should allow such rebellion? What exception could there be to our rules? Do you think yourself necessary because you have a fine voice? Can you know me and yet think that the representation of “Athalie” goes before the regulations established at Saint-Cyr? No, certainly not; and you will leave the establishment if I hear anything more about you. Submit, if you wish to remain; but, if you wish to leave, it will be more honourable to you to do so by agreement with me than to get yourself dismissed. You are lax and cold towards God; it is that which makes you fall into all these faults. Reflect, I beg of you, on what you might hope of yourself on the occasions which you will find to fail. You are becoming grown-up; this is the time to make serious reflections. It is for God, my dear child, to touch your heart, but it is for us to rule your conduct. You will be very unhappy if it is good only externally. I wished to give you this advice before punishing you, and I hope that you will give me the joy of seeing you profit by it; I ask this of you with all my heart; for I am as sorry to have to treat you with rigour as I am resolved to establish in your class an absolute obedience to the regulations.
To Mme. de Fontaines.
September 20, 1691.
The pain I feel about the daughters of Saint-Cyr can only be relieved by time and by a total change in the education we have given them up to this time. It is very just that I should suffer because I have contributed to the harm more than any one; I shall be happy if God does not punish me more severely. My pride has been in everything concerning the establishment; and its depth is so great it carries the day against my own good intentions. God knows that I wanted to establish virtue at Saint-Cyr, but I have built on sand,—not having that which alone can make a firm foundation. I wanted that the girls should have intelligence, that their hearts should be uplifted, their reason formed. I have succeeded in my purpose: they have intelligence, and they use it against us; their hearts are uplifted, and they are prouder and more haughty than is becoming in the greatest princesses—speaking as the world thinks; we have formed their reason, and we have made them disputatious, presumptuous, inquisitive, bold, etc. Thus it is that we succeed when the desire of excelling [shining] makes us act. A simple, Christian education would have made good girls, out of whom we could have made good wives and good nuns; we have made beaux-esprits, whom we ourselves who made them cannot endure: there is our blame, in which I have a greater share than any one.
Let us come to the remedy; for we must not be discouraged. I have already proposed some to Balbien [Mme. de Maintenon’s waiting-maid mentioned in “Saint-Simon” as Nanon]. They may seem to you rather petty, but I hope, by the grace of God, they will not be without effect. As many little things have fomented pride, so many little things will subdue it. Our girls have been too much considered, too petted, too often deferred to. They must now be ignored in their classes; they must be made to keep the rules of the day; and little else must be talked of. They should not be forced to feel that I am angry with them; it is not their grief that I want; I am more to blame than they; I desire only to repair by another line of conduct the harm that has been done. The best girls have done more to show me the excess of pride which we must now correct than the bad ones; I have been more alarmed at seeing their self-conceit and the arrogance of Mlles. de ——, de ——, and de —— than at all that I have heard of the insubordinate members of the class. These are girls of good intentions who wish to be nuns, but with that desire they have a language and manners too proud and haughty to be tolerated at Versailles among young ladies of the highest rank. You see by this that the evil has sunk into their natures, so that they are not themselves aware of it. Pray God, and make others pray that He will change their hearts, and give us all humility. But, madame, do not discourse to them too much. All Saint-Cyr is turning to discourses; much is said there just now of simplicity; they seek to define it, to comprehend it, to discern what is simple and what is not; and then in practice they say: “Out of simplicity, I take the best thing; out of simplicity I praise myself; out of simplicity I want something at table that is far away from me.” Truly, this is turning into ridicule all that is most serious. We must now correct in our girls that turn for witty satire which I myself have given them, and which I now see to be opposed to simplicity; it is a refinement of pride that says in jest what it dares not say openly. But, once more, do not talk to them of pride or satire; we must destroy all that without fighting it, by stopping the use of it; their confessors will talk to them of humility better than we. Do not preach to them,—try that silence that I have so long urged upon you; it will have more effect than all our words.
I am very glad that Mlle. de —— has at last humbled herself; let us praise God for it, but do not praise her; it is another of our faults that we have praised too much. Do not irritate their pride by too frequent corrections; but when you are obliged to make one, do not admire the girl who is corrected for taking it properly.
As for you, my dear daughter, I know your intentions; you have, it seems to me, no personal blame in all this; it is only too true that the great harm has come from me; but take care, with the others, to have no part in that pride which has been so firmly established everywhere that we are scarcely conscious of it. We wanted to avoid the pettiness of certain convents, and God has punished our assumption. There is no house in the world more in need of external and internal humility than ours: its situation so near the Court, its grandeur, its wealth, its nobleness, the air of favour that pervades it, the attentions of a great king, the care of a person of influence, the example of vanity and manners of the world which she gives you in spite of herself by force of habit,—all these dangerous traps ought to make us take measures quite the contrary of those we have hitherto taken. Let us bless God for having opened our eyes. It is he who inspires your piety; it will daily increase; but establish it solidly. Let us not be ashamed to retract; to change our fashions of acting and speaking; and let us ask our Lord fervently to change our hearts within us, to take from our house the spirit of loftiness, of satire, of subtlety, of curiosity, and of freedom in judging and giving our opinion about everything, and of meddling in the duties of others at the risk of wounding charity. Let us pray also that He will take from us that prevailing over-delicacy, that impatience of small inconveniences; silence and humility are the best means. Show my letter to our Mother Superior; all must be in common among us.