facility of a Frenchwoman, she had a strong, active intellect,
boundless ambition, indomitable energy, and the subtlety of an
Italian.

An incident of her early life, related by Mme. du Deffand,
furnishes a key to her complex character, and reveals one secret
of her influence. Born of a poor and proud family in Grenoble,
in 1681, Claudine Alexandrine Guerin de Tencin was destined from
childhood for the cloister. Her strong aversion to the life of a
nun was unavailing, and she was sent to a convent at Montfleury.
This prison does not seem to have been a very austere one, and
the discipline was far from rigid. The young novice was so
devout that the archbishop prophesied a new light for the church,
and she easily persuaded him of the necessity of occupying the
minds of the religieuses by suitable diversions. Though not yet
sixteen, this pretty, attractive, vivacious girl was fertile in
resources, and won her way so far into the good graces of her
superiors as to be permitted to organize reunions, and to have
little comedies played which called together the provincial
society. She transformed the convent, but her secret
disaffection was unchanged. She took the final vows under the
compulsion of her inflexible father, then continued her role of
devote to admirable purpose. By the zeal of her piety, the
severity of her penance, and the ardor of her prayers, she gained
the full sympathy of her ascetic young confessor, to whom she
confided her feeling of unfitness for a religious life, and her
earnest desire to be freed from the vows which sat so uneasily
upon her sensitive conscience. He exhorted her to steadfastness,
but finally she wrote him a letter in which she confessed her
hopeless struggle against a consuming passion, and urged the