Princesse de Guemene, d'Enghien and his sister, Nemours, and many
others. They speak freely of all the world. It is necessary to
have some one who will advise us of all that passes there."

But the death of her favorite son--a young man distinguished for
graces of person, mind, heart, and character, who lost his life
in one of the battles of his friend and comrade, the Prince de
Conde--together with the loss of her fortune and the fading of
her beauty, turned the thoughts of the Marquise to spiritual
things. We find many traces of the state of mind which led her
first into a mild form of devotion, serious but not too ascetic,
and later into pronounced Jansenism. In a note to a friend who
had neglected her, she dwells upon "the misery and nothingness of
the world," recalls the strength of their long friendship, the
depth of her own affection, and tries to account for the
disloyalty to herself, by the inherent weakness and emptiness of
human nature, which renders it impossible for even the most
perfect to do anything that is not defective. All this is very
charitable, to say the least, as well as a little abstract. Time
has given a strange humility and forgivingness to the woman who
broke with her dearest friend, the unfortunate Duc de
Montmorency, because he presumed to lift his eyes to the Queen,
saying that she "could not receive pleasantly the regards which
she had to share with the greatest princess in the world."

The fashion of the period furnished a peaceful and dignified
refuge for women, when their beauty waned and the "terrible
forties" ended their illusions. To go into brief retreat for
penitence and prayer was at all times a graceful thing to do,
besides making for safety. It was only a step further to retire