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 _dévote_ 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 fashionable 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 God that He had made her two things, a Christian and an unhappy Queen (_une reine malheureuse_). But the pleasure of this friendship 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