ne in her
appeal, and she caught the King by her very girlishness, as she played
like a child with him in the parks of the palace. She was a simple
maid of honor to Queen Marie Therese when she first attracted the
notice of the King. A few years afterward she was created a duchess
and, as such, retained the royal favor for a time. Then remorse seized
upon La Valliere; she took the veil, and, as Sister Louise of Mercy,
entered a convent, and gave her life in religious solitude to expiate
the grief that she had caused the good Queen. The atonement was only
just, for Louise de Valliere had made Marie Therese suffer bitterly the
tortures of jealousy and offended conjugal affection. The Queen was
not a woman of unusual intelligence, but she was sensible, tactful, and
had a certain native dignity that compelled respect. She was,
moreover, devoutly religious and devotedly attached to her children.
She shared her royal Husband's conviction as to the divine right of
kings, and what he did she considered could not be wrong. Of all the
women that were associated with Louis, no one more truly admired him
nor was more ardently devoted to him than his Queen. When they were
first married, Louis treated Marie Therese with kindly consideration.
He shed tears of sympathy and anguish while she suffered in giving
birth to her first child. During the following dozen years, Marie
Therese bore six sons and daughters, but all were lost except the
Dauphin, and he died before ascending the throne. These bereavements
sank deep into her heart and left a wound there that never healed.
Added to this was the spectacle that she was called on repeatedly to
witness of the King's infidelities with a succession of favorites. She
was compelled to take these women into her household and make
companions of them, knowing the while that they were really her rivals
and persecutors. She was often heard to cry out concerning one or
other of the favorites, "That woman will be the death of me." La
Valliere she could afford to forgive, for the first mistress paid for
the brief royal favor that she enjoyed by thirty-six years of rigid and
austere penitence. Other favorites, however, pursued a path of pride,
lowering their heads only under the "bludgeonings of Fate." Yet most
of them, while Marie Therese lived, respected and honored her and felt
a certain sense of shame in her presence. The brilliant and beautiful
Madame de Montespan said, some time bef