from such a chaos of turmoil and commotion, in
that calm and holy retreat, her thoughts reverted to the pure and
innocent period of her youth, to the brilliant and tumultuous past, to
the sorrowful and disenchanted present. Embroiled with the Court and
her brothers, abandoned by La Rochefoucauld, in the decline of her
beauty, upon the eve of maturity, she saw in Heaven alone a refuge
against others and herself. But the Divine grace had to be awaited as
well as prayed for, the prickings of conscience were succeeded by
relapses--the ties to be broken were still so strong! At length, one day
when engaged in reading, "a veil, as it were, was drawn from before the
eyes of my mind," she wrote, in that somewhat hyperbolical style of
which she was fond; "all the charms of truth, concentrated upon one sole
object, presented themselves before me. Faith, which had remained dead
and buried beneath my passions, became renewed. I felt like a person
who, after a long sleep in which he has dreamed of being great, happy,
esteemed, and honoured by everybody, awakens all on a sudden to find
himself loaded with chains, pierced with wounds, weighed down with
heaviness, and pent up in some dark prison." To that conviction she
remained faithful until death, and expiated her six years of deviation
by a penitence which lasted for five-and-twenty, and continued ever on
the increase.

The first act of the Duchess, after her conversion, was to implore
pardon of her husband. M. de Longueville behaved generously, and went to
meet her at Moulins, and took her back with him to Rouen with every mark
of delicacy and distinction. Reverting to the aspirations of her youth,
Madame de Longueville placed herself in active communication with the
good Carmelites, whom she had never entirely forgotten. She was
constantly writing to Mademoiselle du Vigean, the _sous-prieure_, for
guidance in her new way of life; for she had need of spiritual advice,
and cried out for help, and help came through the good offices of the
Marquise de Sable, who had herself withdrawn from the world to
Port-Royal, and supplied the want felt by her illustrious friend by
placing her in the hands of one of the great spiritual guides of that
day, M. Singlin. Between the ghostly adviser and the fair penitent there
ensued frequent conversations curiously flavoured with a spice of
romance. Persecution had already attacked Port-Royal, and M. Singlin, in
order not to be recognised, went to th