I love the conveniences of life too well;
this lounge is my destruction." As soon as I obtained permission to do
so, I went to St. Denis to see my late mistress; she deigned to receive me
with her face uncovered, in her private parlour; she told me she had just
left the wash-house, and that it was her turn that day to attend to the
linen. "I much abused your youthful lungs for two years before the
execution of my project," added she. "I knew that here I could read none
but books tending to our salvation, and I wished to review all the
historians that had interested me."

She informed me that the King's consent for her to go to St. Denis had
been brought to her while I was reading; she prided herself, and with
reason, upon having returned to her closet without the slightest mark of
agitation, though she said she felt so keenly that she could scarcely
regain her chair. She added that moralists were right when they said that
happiness does not dwell in palaces; that she had proved it; and that, if
I desired to be happy, she advised me to come and enjoy a retreat in which
the liveliest imagination might find full exercise in the contemplation of
a better world. I had no palace, no earthly grandeur to sacrifice to God;
nothing but the bosom of a united family; and it is precisely there that
the moralists whom she cited have placed true happiness. I replied that,
in private life, the absence of a beloved and cherished daughter would be
too cruelly felt by her family. The Princess said no more on the subject.

The seclusion of Madame Louise was attributed to various motives; some
were unkind enough to suppose it to have been occasioned by her
mortification at being, in point of rank, the last of the Princesses. I
think I penetrated the true cause. Her aspirations were lofty; she loved
everything sublime; often while I was reading she would interrupt me to
exclaim, "That is beautiful! that is noble!" There was but one brilliant
action that she could perform,--to quit a palace for a cell, and rich
garments for a stuff gown. She achieved it!

I saw Madame Louise two or three times more at the grating. I was
informed of her death by Louis XVI. "My Aunt Louise," said he to me,
"your old mistress, is just dead at St. Denis. I have this moment
received intelligence of it. Her piety and resignation were admirable,
and yet the delirium of my good aunt recalled to her recollection that she
was a princess, for her last wo