to the Bastile by Cardinal de Richelieu a very few
years after the purchase was completed. During his imprisonment he lent
Chaillot to his sister-in-law, Madame de Nemours. One day Richelieu sent
to the Bastile to request his prisoner to let him occupy Chaillot as a
summer abode. Bassompierre accordingly sent word to his sister-in-law
that she must make way for the all-powerful minister. Richelieu
remained at Chaillot for over six weeks, and declared that the furniture
of the apartments was far finer than anything in that line which the
king possessed.

The sad figure of Henriette Marie, the widowed queen of Charles I. of
England, and youngest daughter of Henri IV., comes next upon the scene.
She it was who, having purchased Chaillot after her return to France,
established there the convent of Les Dames de la Visitation. A chapel
was added to the extensive structure left behind by her father's old
comrade, and it was in that chapel that her funeral sermon was preached
by Bossuet--one of the first of those marvellous pieces of funereal
eloquence which more than aught else have contributed to render his name
immortal.

Next we have a vision of Louise de la Valliere, "like Niobe, all tears,"
flying to the arms of the abbess of the Visitandines for refuge from the
anguish of beholding the insolent De Montespan enthroned in her place.
It took all the eloquence and persuasive powers of Colbert to induce the
fair weeper to return with him to Versailles. She yielded at last, but
not without many sad forebodings that were destined to be only too
perfectly fulfilled. "When I left the king before, he came for me: now,
he sends for me," she sighed. She bade farewell to the abbess, assuring
her that she would speedily return. But when, after three years more of
suffering and humiliation, she finally retired to a convent, she did not
enter that of the Visitandines, but that of the Carmelites, then
situated in the Faubourg St. Jacques.

In 1707 a dispute between the Superior of the Visitandines and the
officers of the king led to the abolition of the feudal privileges of
Chaillot, and it was created a suburb of the city of Paris. Henceforward
the quiet convent belongs no more to history. From the windows of their
cells the nuns could behold the laying out of the Champ de Mars and the
erection of the new military school decreed by Louis XV. But they were
not destined to witness the Festival of the Republic, which took place
on the