“It was rare at Madame de Rochechouart’s to hear any one speak ill of their neighbours, and even then it was always much more vaguely than in any of the other sets in the Convent. Yet her circle was the one most feared, for it was well known that every one there was witty, and superior to the rest. It was therefore looked upon as a kind of tribunal, whose criticism one dreaded to encounter. When, on leaving Madame de Rochechouart, I returned to the sacristy, Madame Saint Mathieu and Madame Sainte Ursule used to ask me: ‘Well, what do those exquisites say about us?’--‘Nothing, Madame,’ I could honestly reply; ‘they did not mention you.’ Then their astonishment was without end, for they themselves ran down the whole household all day long. I may say that Madame de Rochechouart, her sister Madame de Saint Sulpice, and several other ladies of their society, had an indifference amounting to contempt for anything that did not particularly concern them, and were always the last to become acquainted with the news of the Convent. “It seemed to me that Madame de Rochechouart and her sister had a style of their own, and a manner that we all caught; I mean those of us whom she received. The women of the world were astonished at the style in which we expressed ourselves. Mademoiselle de Conflans, especially, never said anything like any one else; there was originality in her every word.” Madame de Rochechouart’s society, the advice, full of tact, and refinement that she gave these young girls, admirably adapted them for the part they were destined to fill in the highest ranks of society. In our free and easy days we cannot have the faintest conception of what was formerly considered good style and courteous manners, nor of the value that was set on all the different shades of good breeding. “Politeness, good taste, and style constituted a kind of truce that each one guarded with care, as if it had been confided to them only. Women especially were the chief supporters of this ground-work of all the charms of society.”[59] “I shall never forget what happened one day between me and Madame de Rochechouart. She had told me to come to her cell in the evening. So I went, and found her surrounded with papers, busily writing. I was not astonished, as she was in the habit of being so occupied; but what struck me was to see her look disconcerted and blush tremendously on my arrival. She told me to take a book and sit down. “I therefore pretended to read, and watched her; she wrote with great agitation, rubbed her forehead, sighed, and looked around her with a fixed and absent look, as if her thoughts were a hundred leagues away.