too young to abandon! I stayed still in the midst of you, as the swallow
hovers and flits among the smoke of the fire, in order to watch over and
save her little ones. Do not wait till disdain or authority mingles in
the matter. Do not come to the sad necessity of resisting a monarch, and
of detesting to the point of scandal that which you have so publicly
loved; pity him, but depart. This kind of intimacy, once broken, cannot
be renewed. However skilfully it may be patched up, the rent always
reappears."

"My good Louise," I replied to the amiable Carmelite, "your wise counsels
touch me, persuade me, and are nothing but the truth. But in listening
to you I feel overwhelmed; and that strength which you knew how to gain,
and show to the world, your former companion will never possess.

"I see with astonished eyes the supernatural calm which reigns in your
countenance; your health seems to me a prodigy, your beauty was never so
ravishing; but this barbarous garb pierces me to the heart.

"The King does not yet hate me; he shows me even a remnant of respect,
with which he would colour his indifference. Permit me to ask from him
for you an abbey like that of Fontevrault, where the felicities of
sanctuary and of the world are all in the power of my sister. He will
ask nothing better than to take you out, be assured."

"Speak to him of me," answered Louise; "I do not oppose that; but leave
me until the end the role of obedience and humility that his fault and
mine impose on me. Why should he wish that I should command others,--I
who did not know how to command myself at an epoch when my innocence was
so dear to me, and when I knew that, in losing that, one is lost?"