Henrietta Maria Part 23

Louise de la Fayette had spent many quiet years in her convent when Henrietta first visited it in 1651.[408] She had won the respect of all the community, and she had been honoured by the special notice of Mother Chantal. "This girl will be one of the great superiors of our Order," said the aged saint. It is not probable that she and the Queen of England had met in the past, but her story cannot have been unknown to the sister of Louis XIII, and when the introduction was made by Madame de Motteville, acquaintance ripened at once into friends.h.i.+p. There was much in the nun's story to arouse the Queen's sympathy, for was not Louise de la Fayette one more of the victims of Richelieu?

Henrietta was received in the Rue S. Antoine with the respect due to the blood of Henry IV, and with the affectionate sympathy which her sorrows called forth, particularly from the superior,[409] a wide-minded woman who had been educated as a Protestant, and who perhaps in consequence had followed with special interest the course of events in England. But though such difficulties as had arisen among the Carmelites were not likely to occur in a convent of the Visitation, yet, from the scantiness of the accommodation, it was difficult to receive a royal lady for more than very short visits, and the position of the house in the centre of Paris rendered it rather unsuitable for such retirement as the Queen sought. Besides, her heart yearned for something that would be more truly her own. Other royal ladies had made religious foundations. Her mother had had her Carmelites, her sister-in-law had her beautiful Val de Grace. Might not she also become the foundress of a house which should shelter her while living, and cherish her memory and pray for her soul after her death? It happened that just at this time one of the princ.i.p.al nuns had the similar desire to extend the Order by the foundation of a daughter house. Helene Angelique Lhulier was no ordinary woman. In the heyday of her youth and beauty, "when she was the most attached to the world, and the most sought by several persons of the first quality," she left all at the bidding of S. Francis de Sales, who wrote her the following short and pithy note: "My daughter, enter religion immediately, notwithstanding all the oppositions of nature." Her force of character was remarkable, and particularly her strength of will, which, it was said, enabled her to do things which appeared impossible. All her courage and tenacity were called forth by this new enterprise, to which, learning of Henrietta's desire, she determined to devote herself. Indeed, the obstacles in the way seemed insurmountable. The house in the Rue S.

Antoine was far from rich, and it had recently made a settlement in the Faubourg S. Jacques, which had exhausted its resources. The Queen of England was known to be in no position to give monetary help, and to complete the difficulties the Archbishop of Paris looked very coldly upon the scheme.

But Henrietta's friends were determined that she should have the interest and consolation on which she had set her heart. Mother Lhulier and Mother de la Fayette, whom the Queen hoped to see the true foundation-stones of the new edifice, were untiring in their efforts, and Queen Anne showed herself on this, as on many other occasions, a real friend to her widowed sister-in-law. The decision was so far made that Henrietta, though she had no money, and no prospect of money, set about the agreeable task of finding a home for the new community.

The Queen went hither and thither looking at properties which were in the market, but none pleased her so much as that which had belonged to her old friend the Marshal de Ba.s.sompierre, who was recently dead. This beautiful mansion, which had been built by Catherine de' Medici and honoured more than once by the presence of Richelieu, stood in one of the best positions in the immediate environs of the city, on rising ground overlooking the Seine, and commanding magnificent views of the surrounding country. It was approached by the leafy Cours la Reine, the most fas.h.i.+onable promenade in Paris, where on summer evenings as many as eight hundred coaches might be counted, and though the house and grounds were in the village of Chaillot, the Faubourg de la Conference had crept up so that the two almost joined.

To the charms of nature were added those of art. Ba.s.sompierre was one of the most accomplished men of his time, and he so lavished the resources of his ample means and of his refined taste upon his favourite residence, that it became one of the sights of Paris, and as such was visited by John Evelyn, who came away delighted with the "gardens, terraces, and rare prospects,"[410] which he beheld there. Since the death of the owner the house had fallen on evil days. Ba.s.sompierre's heir, the Count de Tillieres, was unable to take possession of the property, and it became a place of very evil fame, the resort of lewd persons, who defiled its stately halls and fair walks with scenes of shameless revelry.

Henrietta was always rapid in her decisions, and she speedily made up her mind that here and nowhere else was the dwelling-place which would at once furnish an ideal convent for the religious and a pleasant retirement for herself. She hurried back to the Rue S. Antoine and carried off two of the nuns to inspect the house. They found it indeed most beautiful, and their only scruple was that it was too fine and inconsistent with their vow of poverty; but they waived this objection, not quite unwillingly perhaps, when they saw how the Queen's heart was set upon Chaillot, and how she was diverted from her sorrows by the pleasure which she took in her plans for installing her friends and herself in this charming retreat.

Mother Lhulier took legal steps to gain possession of the property, but grave difficulties, which perhaps had not been foreseen, arose. Tillieres and the other heirs of Ba.s.sompierre claimed the property, but they had never been in possession of it, and their rights seem to have been ignored in the transaction with the nuns, whose purchase-money was to be applied to the liquidation of the late owner's debts. The Count, though he saved his reputation as a courtier by behaving with great civility to Henrietta, and a.s.suring her that she was welcome to live in the house as long as she pleased, provided she did not turn it into a convent, determined to fight the matter in the law courts. He was supported by the magistrates of Chaillot, who probably did not wish to see a profitable place of pleasure closed, and by a large number of persons, some of high quality, who were in the habit of frequenting it. The pious chronicler of the Order of the Visitation[411] sees behind these human figures that of the arch-fiend himself, who was interested in preventing a piece of territory which was specially his from lapsing to the service of G.o.d. But good, as we know, is stronger than evil. The judges of the case, almost against their will, and certainly under the direct inspiration of Providence, gave the decision in favour of the nuns, whose joy was only dashed by the hard condition that a large sum of money must be forthcoming in twenty-four hours.

The case appeared hopeless. Neither Henrietta nor the nuns had a tenth of the sum required, and money was just then very scarce; but Mother Lhulier was a woman to whom seeming impossibilities were only opportunities. She made the need known to all whom she knew, and then waited in quiet a.s.surance for the result of her appeal. Her faith was rewarded. Just before the close of the specified time of grace, a rich gentleman, who was a great friend of hers, came to say that he was willing to guarantee the whole amount.

But even now the troubles were not at an end. Tillieres was determined to fight to the last, and he enlisted on his side the ecclesiastical authorities, who from the first had not looked very kindly upon the project of the new foundation. The Archbishop of Paris was still that same Jean Francois de Gondi who had been so deeply affronted by the refusal to allow him to officiate at Henrietta's wedding. He was now a very old man, but he was none the less willing to avenge an ancient slight. He pointed out petulantly that there were already two houses of the Visitation in Paris and another in the neighbourhood of S. Denys. That the charge of the new convent would certainly come upon the public, and that a household of fifteen persons, however pious, could not be supported for nothing. He ended up by remarking with great acerbity that exiled queens with political business in their hands should not choose religious houses as their place of retirement.

"However," we are told, "G.o.d who holds the hearts of the great in His hand, soon changed that of the Prelate," and the instrument of this happy conversion was Queen Anne. Attempts were made to play on her cupidity and that of her young son by pointing out that Chaillot had originally been a royal residence, and would make again another nice country house for the King; but she refused to listen, and devoted herself to winning over the Archbishop, who was far too good a courtier not to yield quickly to such persuasion. His views changed with a wonderful rapidity, and very soon Henrietta had the happiness of knowing that the last obstacle was removed, and that nothing stood in the way of the realization of her wish.

She herself undertook the work of preparing the house for the reception of the nuns. Hers was a busy, active nature, and she was never happier than when spending herself for those she loved. Some of the furniture she supplied herself and some was sent from the Rue S. Antoine, where the little band of women under the guidance of Mother Lhulier and Mother de la Fayette was ready to set out. The removal took place upon the 21st of June, 1651. The nuns were seen off from their old home by Vincent de Paul,[412]

that strange figure of seventeenth-century Paris, whose shabby _soutane_ was found in the _salon_ of the n.o.ble as in the hovel of the poor, and whose advice was sought at the council table of the King as in the home of the meanest of his subjects. He was at this time director of the mother house, and though he is not known ever to have set foot within the convent of Chaillot, his memory is linked with it by the blessing which he bestowed upon its beginning.

At Chaillot Henrietta was waiting, radiant and expectant. She greeted her guests with delight, giving perhaps a specially warm welcome to two of the younger members of the little band of nine or ten--one, the only novice of the house, Eugenie Madeline Berthaud, the sister of her dear friend Madame de Motteville; the other a Scotch girl, Mary Hamilton[413] by name, whom in earlier days she had welcomed at her Court in London, but whose desire for a conventual life was such that leaving home and country she had set out for Paris, where she entered the convent in the Rue S. Antoine, without knowing a single word of the French tongue.

Henrietta led the nuns all over the house, discoursing upon its charms and conveniences, and dwelling specially upon the beauties of the situation.

She had arranged that her own rooms should be in the front, overlooking the public road, while the nuns were to take the quieter apartments which faced the garden. She was surprised and disconcerted when these ladies, who were less used to palaces than she was, objected to the splendour of the lodging provided for them, and insisted upon retiring to the garrets, which they said were more suitable to their vow of poverty, and whence they were only induced to descend some days later, at the Queen's special request, and when she had carefully removed from the downstairs rooms all that savoured of worldly vanity; but neither this little difficulty nor the more serious trouble that, owing to the continued opposition of Tillieres, it was necessary to defend the house with a guard of archers, could damp Henrietta's joy on such a day. She spent several hours with the nuns in happy talk and plans, and then drove back to the Palais Royal, where she was living at this time, happier perhaps than she had ever been since her husband's death.

Chaillot was honoured by letters patent from the Crown of France, which gave it the status of a royal foundation and Henrietta the t.i.tle of foundress. When the enclosure was set up about a week after the arrival of the nuns, a number of distinguished persons a.s.sisted at the ceremony, though it had to be done quickly for fear of disturbance from those who had struggled so hard to keep this fair property out of the hands of the Church. Henrietta heard the first Ma.s.s which was sung in the chapel with a triumph which was all the sweeter to her bold and enterprising nature from the many difficulties which had beset the undertaking.

Congratulations were not lacking. Among the most graceful were those which Walter Montagu made public two years later in a dedication to the Queen of a volume of religious essays. "Under that notion, Madam," he wrote, "of an aspirer to a more transcendent Majestie I present your Religious Mind these entertainments: which will be the less unmannerly the greater privacie and retreat they intrude themselves upon; and truly, as your life stands now dispos'd the greater part of your time is favourable for such admissions.

Since you pa.s.s the most of it in that holy retirement, whither you have carry'd up the Cross in triumph; having set That over your Head and the most tempting part (perhaps) of the whole world, as it were, under your feet.

"And, methinks, Madam, this remark may not a little indear to you the seat of your pious retirement; viz. That you, who have been dispossess'd of so many n.o.ble houses and pleasant scituations, by the worlds violence and injustice, and have had many religious receptacles (by your means consecrated) taken from you by the Prince of this world, transferring them to his profane uses: That your vertue yet should have made so eminent a reprizal upon the world's possessions in your retreat out of it. And what a comfort may it be to you to think that G.o.d has made use of you, to take from this Prince one of the chiefest holds; and convert it, as it were, into a Religious Citadel, furnish'd with such a Garrison as professing irreconcileable enmitie to him and all his partie, bears away as many conquests as it has combatants, daily singing Te Deum for their continual victories."[414]

Henrietta, as is hinted in the above pa.s.sage, was not slow to take advantage of the retreat which she had won with so much difficulty. "Our good Queen," wrote Sir Richard Browne in August, 1651, "spends much of her time of late in a new monastery ... of which she is the t.i.tular foundress."[415] The more she saw of her new friends the more she loved them, and her affection was warmly returned. It became an understood thing that year by year she should pa.s.s at Chaillot the seasons of the great festivals of the Church, and her visits, which were usually for ten days or a fortnight, sometimes extended to several months. She came to look upon the convent as the best subst.i.tute for the home she had lost. There she pa.s.sed the happiest days of her latter years, and there, had not a sudden death surprised her, she would have died.

Nor was her retirement without agreeable society from outside, for Chaillot was the resort of some who were among the ornaments of the Parisian world.

There might often have been seen the Queen-Regent, whose visits at the time of the foundation were continued to the day when, on her dying journey to S. Germain-en-Laye, she was carried "to see this poor convent once more,"[416] and who in that holy retreat was able at last to forget the jealousies of bygone days, and to hold out the hand of cordial friends.h.i.+p to Louise de la Fayette. Sometimes an even greater honour was bestowed on the religious when the lad who was afterwards "le grand Monarque" appeared at the door, to be welcomed with all the ceremony due to the G.o.d-given hope of France. Not infrequently the bright and gifted Madame de la Fayette, who was winning a literary reputation, to be crowned later by the publication of _La Princesse de Cleves_, came to chat with her husband's sister, or to lay the foundation of that intimacy with Henrietta of England which fitted her to be the biographer of her short life. Most constant visitor of all, Madame de Motteville brought her wit, her accomplishments, and her long experience of Court life to enliven the dullness of the cloister. When the death of Queen Anne released her from the faithful attendance of years she spent a great part of her time at Chaillot, where she was the frequent companion of the Queen of England, who beguiled the long, quiet hours by recounting her past experiences, particularly her adventures during the Civil War, all of which her listener carefully wrote down and finally incorporated in the charming memoirs which were the princ.i.p.al occupation of her later days, and which contain many details of Henrietta's character and career lost but for her in the silence of time.

But perhaps the most romantic visitor who ever appeared at Chaillot was a runaway Princess, who found there an asylum after her conversion from the Protestant to the Catholic religion. Louise of the Palatine was a connection of the Queen of England, for she was the daughter of Elizabeth of Bohemia, the Winter Queen, whose beauty had turned so many men's heads and hearts. Louise lived with her unfortunate family at The Hague, and she solaced the weary days of an exiled Princess by the study of accomplishments, especially of painting, for which she had real talent. The attractions of the Church of Rome were represented to her by a priest, who gained her ear and her confidence as an instructor in her favourite art.

She determined to abandon the religion of her family; and, as she knew that her position in her mother's house would be intolerable, she sought refuge in flight, and threw herself upon the protection of her aunt by marriage, whose devotion to the Church of Rome was a matter of common knowledge.

Louise was not disappointed. Henrietta, to whom the conversion of any Protestant was a matter of real interest, and who must have felt a certain satisfaction in the secession to the enemy's camp of one of the children of the Queen of Bohemia, whose Protestantism had often in the past been unfavourably compared with her Catholicism, received the girl with motherly kindness, and bestowed her at Chaillot under the care of Mother de la Fayette. Louise soon expressed a desire to enter the religious life, and it was thought that she would take the veil in the convent which sheltered her; but Mother de la Fayette, with the good sense which distinguished her, objected to the profession of a Princess, whose birth would necessitate her election to a high office, to which perhaps her personal qualities would not ent.i.tle her. So the royal lady went on to the Cistercians, who had no such scruples, and who made her Abbess of Maubuisson, near Pontoise, where she lived in much repute to a green old age, and famed perhaps as well as her younger sister Sophia, whose steadfast Protestantism was rewarded by the reversion of the crown of the Three Kingdoms, and whose descendants sit to this day upon the throne which she missed by a few weeks.

In 1654 Mother Lhulier died. She was succeeded[417] in the office of Superior, as might have been expected, by Mother de la Fayette, whose election was much desired by the Queens of both England and France. These royal ladies considerately abstained, from expressing any opinion on the subject that the nuns' choice might be free, but their wishes must have been well known, and they no doubt fell in with those of the religious.

Louise de la Fayette fully justified the prophecy of Mother Chantal, and if Chaillot owed much to the force of character and strength of will of the first Superior, it owed even more to the sagacious rule of the second, who endeared herself to all, whether religious or visitors. The house was already sufficiently established, but the financial condition gave great cause for anxiety, and almost justified the ungracious forebodings of the Archbishop of Paris, though kind friends, among whom Madame de Motteville was one of the most generous, gave considerable gifts, and some of the religious, such as her sister, the first professed nun of the house, were able to bring dowries. Queen Henrietta, who had no money to give, exerted herself to procure high-born little pupils for the convent school, whose liberal pensions were indeed for some time the chief support of the house.

She set the example by placing her own little daughter, Princess Henrietta, under the care of Mother de la Fayette, and, as was hoped, her presence attracted other children of equal rank, among whom was the daughter of the d.u.c.h.ess of Nemours, who was afterwards Queen of Portugal. No children could have had a more beautiful home or a more apt instructress; for the nun, in her long years of conventual life, had lost no whit of the graces and accomplishments of her courtly youth or of her natural kindliness of heart.

Her charity, indeed, rose superior even to the acerbities of theological pa.s.sion. To her care was confided one of the exiled nuns of Port Royal, and it is recorded that, in honourable contrast to the Superiors of other religious houses charged with a like burden, she treated her unwelcome guest with constant courtesy and kindness.

Chaillot was to Henrietta a peaceful retreat after all her sorrows, for the world was strictly excluded, and the convent never became, like Val de Grace, a centre of political intrigue. There, removed from the troubles of dangerous schemes, of jarring religions, and of perpetual disappointments, the Queen regained something of the brightness and more than the tranquillity of her earlier years. The quiet days, pa.s.sed in a round of prayer, of conversation, and of reading, flowed on undisturbed; and as she grew older she pleased herself by talking of the time when she should take up her abode permanently with her dear nuns, only, she said, she feared the damp of the river-side house a little. The kindness of the nuns, who saw in her not only a royal foundress, but a much-tried and suffering woman, was very great. At one time they even permitted her to join them at their recreation; and when this was found to be undesirable, her particular friends among the community were still ready to cheer and amuse her by their agreeable conversation, while they in their turn were often much diverted by her witty talk and stories of the surprising adventures which had befallen her, and which a.s.suredly lost nothing in the telling. She was too clear-sighted and humorous not to appreciate that a queen was of necessity a troublesome member of a religious household, and she set herself to mitigate the annoyance as far as possible. She kept a very small household, only one lady-in-waiting, two or three other attendants, and as many girls to do the cooking, and she was careful to select only such women as would conduct themselves with quietness and decorum. One of her chief objects in choosing a situation on the outskirts of Paris had been to avoid the flow of idle visitors who in the city itself were a real annoyance to religious houses, and she refused to receive those who came on idle and frivolous pretexts. No one, however high his rank or pressing his business, was permitted to enter the enclosure without the leave of the Superior; and once, when Henrietta herself was unable to walk and was carried out from Paris in a chair, she insisted upon waiting at the gate of the convent until permission for her bearers to enter had been obtained. On all ordinary occasions she came down to the parlour and interviewed her visitors through the grill, even when the matter in hand was so intimate as that of trying on new clothes. She was equally considerate in any question which might disturb the religious routine of the house; and this delicate woman of over fifty, a princess by birth and a queen by marriage, whose health had been ruined by her troubles and privations, dragged herself from her bed at an early hour in the cold winter mornings that the community Ma.s.s, at which she liked to a.s.sist, might not be delayed.

Perhaps the greatest pleasure of Henrietta's life at Chaillot was the long conversations which she held with Mother de la Fayette, whose attraction was as great for her as years before it had been for her brother. Into the nun's sympathizing ear she poured the tale of her sorrows, her fears, and her aspirations, and from her she received those instructions and counsels which made her in her latter years, in the words of Madame de Motteville, a _devote_ without the pretensions of one. Mother de la Fayette taught her the art of meditation, an art which must have been difficult to the Queen's vivacious and easily distracted mind, and it was probably under her advice, as well as that of her confessor, that she refused to interest herself in the various theories of grace which the controversies of Port Royal were making a fas.h.i.+onable subject of conversation, and confined her spiritual reading to a perusal and reperusal of a book which has brought consolation to thousands of weary spirits, the _De Imitatione Christi_. Her confidence in Mother de la Fayette, which probably was due in some measure to the isolation and independence which her position as a nun gave her, was very great. It extended even to her worldly affairs, which she would hardly have discussed with an ordinary friend. It was still more marked with regard to those inner matters of the spirit in which heart speaks to heart. It was to this chosen friend that Henrietta made the touching confession, which Bossuet, through Madame de Motteville, was able to proclaim to the world after her death, that every day on her knees she thanked G.o.d that He had made her two things, a Christian and an unhappy Queen (_une reine malheureuse_). But the pleasure of this friends.h.i.+p was not to be Henrietta's to the end. In 1664 the Queen was in England. She kept up a constant communication with the nuns at Chaillot, and she was much gratified to receive a letter telling her of the return of Mother de la Fayette to the convent, from which she had been absent on a reforming mission to another religious house, and of her re-election as Superior.

Very shortly another letter followed telling of the nun's sudden and serious illness, and hardly had the Queen grasped this intelligence when the news came that Louise de la Fayette was dead. Though she had spent twenty-seven years in religion she was even now only forty-six years old, and the community mourned her as one who had been taken away in the midst of her age. It is not likely that she ever regretted her early decision, for the position of a highly born nun in those days, particularly if she resided in the capital, was dignified and important, and compared favourably with that of the worldly woman in all but variety and excitement. A convent parlour might be, and often was, the scene of conversations as interesting and influential as any held in a _salon_ or boudoir; and if Louise de la Fayette did not wield a distinctly political influence, it was rather from choice than from inability. Her early and tragic experience had taught her a real contempt for the fleeting glitter of Court life, and she never lost the spirit which, in her early convent days, led her, when one of her former friends reproached her for the change which had come over her, and hinted that she was mad, to reply gently: "No, I think I have left you the madness in leaving you the world."

She had no truer mourner than the Queen of England, who hastened to a.s.sociate herself with the sorrowing community. "One day you tell me," she wrote, "of the serious condition of Mother de la Fayette, and the next you announce to me her death, which grieves me deeply. It is a loss for the whole Order, and particularly for our house. I cannot express to you the grief which I feel; it is too great. I pray you to tell all our daughters that I sympathize with their sorrow, and to a.s.sure them that they will always find me ready to make proof of the friends.h.i.+p which I have for them, and which I had for the Mother they are mourning."[418]

The picture which is presented of Henrietta through the medium of the Chaillot Papers, though in no sense false, is necessarily one-sided. All persons are influenced by the surroundings in which they find themselves, and if the Queen of England appeared to the nuns as a woman of almost saintly piety, whose every thought was given to heaven, and whose sorrows had completely detached her from the world, it is because thus she really was in their gentle society within the charmed walls of their convent. They did not see her in the outside world, where th.o.r.n.y problems again beset her, and where her old faults of temper and judgment tended to reappear.

She had ever been not only a woman of strong religious and moral principle, but one whose qualities of heart and head had gained her more affection than often falls to the lot of a royal lady, and the effect of Chaillot was to emphasize and develop every virtue and charm she possessed, and to throw completely into the background all that was harsh and discordant and unlovely. Among the many portraits which remain to show her "in her habit as she lived" is one which represents her as the recluse of Chaillot, and which brings strong corroboration to the loving pen-and-ink sketches of the good nuns. A woman, still comely and showing the remains of great beauty, looks out upon us from the canvas; the heavy mourning dress corresponds with the deep melancholy of the face, and if there are no tears in the eyes, it is only because the painter has caught that saddest of all moments, when

"The eyes are weary and give o'er, But still the soul weeps as before."[419]

Thus she must often have appeared as she sat in her quiet room at Chaillot, or knelt in the convent chapel; and if in later years she was able to take up life again with something of her old courage and cheerfulness, it was because her wounded spirit had met healing and peace in this beloved home, which had been founded, as the archives of the Order recorded, for the consolation of a suffering woman, and which, after sheltering the sorrows of one exiled Queen of England, was to extend a like welcome to another hardly less unfortunate, Mary Beatrice d'Este, the wife of Henrietta's second son, James II.[420]

[Footnote 402: "Mon inclination est de me retirir dans les Carmelites ...

car apres ma perte je ne puis avoir un moment de aucune joye."--_Lettres de Henriette Marie a sa soeur Christine_, p. 71.]

[Footnote 403: Jeanne Chantal.]

[Footnote 404: _A New Description of Paris_ (1887), p. 121. The chapel is now a church of the _eglise reformee_.]

[Footnote 405: Queen Anne of Austria was very fond of this convent.

Mazarin, in the early days of his power, believed that the nuns tried to influence her against him.]

[Footnote 406: Mme de Motteville: _Memoires_ (1783), I, 72.]

[Footnote 407: This account is taken from that written by Caussin, an old copy of which is preserved in the Bibliotheque S. Genevieve, in Paris.

Caussin's ma.n.u.script was only seen by Mother de la Fayette shortly before her death.]

[Footnote 408: Her profession took place in July, 1637.]

[Footnote 409: Louise Eugenie de la Fontaine. During the second war of the Fronde this lady received into the convent a number of religious (among them the Chaillot nuns) who were afraid to remain outside Paris. "Il sembloit que cette maison etoit un pet.i.t Paradis Terrestre ou une arche qui vaguoit en a.s.surance dans un repos admirable pendant que tout etoit dans une confusion epouvantable et qu'on entendoit de tous cotez les canons et les mosquets qui se tiroient a la batail de la porte S. Antoine."--_Vie de la Ven. Mere Louise Eugenie de la Fontaine._]

[Footnote 410: Evelyn: _Diary_. December 5th, 1643.]

[Footnote 411: MS. 2436, Bibliotheque Mazarine, Paris. From this history many of the details of this chapter are taken.]

[Footnote 412: He was an old friend and disciple of Berulle.]

[Footnote 413: She was apparently a sister of Sir William Hamilton, the Queen's late agent in Rome.]

[Footnote 414: _Miscellanea Spiritualia_, Pt. II (1653).]

[Footnote 415: _Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn_ (1859), Vol. IV, p. 352.]

[Footnote 416: Madame de Motteville: _Memoires_, VI, p. 212 (1783).]

[Footnote 417: The Superiors of the Order of the Visitation are chosen for three years. Mother de la Fayette held office three times, from 1654-7, from 1657-60, and from 1663 until her death in the following year.]

[Footnote 418: C[arlo] C[otolendi]: _Vie de la tres haute et tres puissante Princesse Henriette Marie de France Reyne de la Grande Bretagne_, p. 311.]