La Vallière, now Sister Louise de la Miséricorde, made an exemplary nun. She wore horse-hair next her skin, walked barefoot along the stone pavement of the convent, and fasted rigorously. She died at sixty-six, wasted to a skeleton by her austerities. Her end was peace. CHAPTER XXIII. M. DE LAUZUN AND "MADEMOISELLE." On the line of rail to Orleans, two and a half leagues from Paris, is the station and village of Choisy le Roi. Of the enchanting abode once erected here, on the verge of grassy lawns bordering the Seine, nothing has been left by the revolution but a fragment of wall, built into a porcelain manufactory. _Choisy Mademoiselle_, afterwards to be called by Louis XV. _Choisy le Roi_, was built by Mademoiselle de Montpensier, daughter of Gaston, Duc d'Orléans, under the advice of Le Nôtre. It was to serve as a summer retreat from the gloomy splendours of the Luxembourg; a _folie_ where she might spend the summer heats, try her English horses, train her hounds, row on the river, tend her aviaries, and watch her flowers. Here, freed from all scrutiny, she could be imperious or devout, childish or solemn, vain or humble, as suited her fickle humour; here she could set traps to catch obstinate emperors who refused to wed, fast upon the most delicate morsels, _bouder_ the Court when neglected by her Jupiter-cousin the King, and cultivate such remains of beauty as still lingered on her oval face and almond-shaped blue eyes. At Choisy all was formal, to suit the taste of its mistress. The _corps de logis_, a pavilion in one story, a mass of lofty windows, was flanked on either side by conservatories and orangeries which masked the offices. Within, the entire south front was occupied by a gallery, with frescoed ceiling and cornice; the walls covered with crimson satin, on which hung the family portraits of _La Grande Mademoiselle_. Each name was written under each portrait, so that all persons looking on them might read the lofty lineage of this granddaughter of Henry the Great. At one extremity of the gallery was a chapel, at the other a writing-cabinet. Here, the victories and conquests of Louis XIV., painted in miniature, by Van der Meulen, were arranged. These miniatures also were inscribed with names and dates. A likeness of his Majesty on horseback, when a youth, hung over the chimney-piece. Beyond the writing-cabinet was a billiard-room, as well as a suite of private apartments devoted to the use of the Princess herself. Without, broad terraces were balanced by flights of steps, statues, vases, and trophies; _jets d'eau_ rose out of marble basins, and precisely arranged flowers and orange-trees adorned the walks. There was a park of a hundred acres, with woods on either hand, trimmed to an exact resemblance of each other. Choisy, like its mistress, was in perpetual _costume de Cour_; nothing but the river, towards which the gardens sloped, was as nature had made it. Not even _La Grande Mademoiselle_