She paces up and down the floor—she sobs, she moans. Everything about her reminds her of the King. She handles the presents he has given her; she takes out his letters; she kisses them; she presses them to her bosom. She tries to collect her thoughts, but the murmur of the night wind, sweeping over the trees in the adjacent forest and whistling round the angles of the palace, catches her ear. To her excited imagination it wails lamentations over her. As she listens she seems to hear her mother's voice reproaching her. Now as the blast rises higher and higher it is her father, who curses her in the tempest that sweeps by. Trembling in every limb she rises and dashes the glittering baubles she still holds in her hands to the ground. Her head reels, her reason totters. Fresh sobs and fresh torrents of tears come to her relief. Suddenly the same idea, in the same place, rushes into her mind as had struck Louise de Lafayette, yet under widely different circumstances. Louise de Lafayette, a creature so pure, so angelic as to start back dismayed from the faintest whisper of a too ardent love—she, Louise de la Vallière, held up to public contumely, dismissed the Court! She must fly; she must never be heard of more. She can never return home. A convent must hide her. "God alone and the blessed saints are left to me!" she cries; "wretch that I am, let me seek them where they may be found." As soon as the grey morning comes creeping into her room, lighting up her white face and crushed figure, as she leans back in the chair where she has sat immovable all the live-long night, she rises, and puts together a little bundle of necessaries. She covers herself with a cloak, and softly opening the door, makes her way down the nearest flight of stairs. No one sees her, for the day is only dawning. She glides swiftly out of the palace, passes the gate, where the sentinel is sleeping at his post, and finds herself in the street of the little town of Saint-Germain. Her heart beats so quickly, and her steps are so rapid, that she is soon obliged to stop for want of breath. Not knowing where to go, she leans against the corner of a house. She strains her eyes up and down the street in every direction, but sees no one of whom she can ask her way. At last, at the bottom of the _grande rue_, a country woman appears, carrying a basket on her arm. She is on her way to market. Louise flies towards her. The woman stares at her. La Vallière's lips move, but she has no breath to speak. "God speed you, pretty lady. Where are you going so early?" asks the peasant. "_Ma bonne_," at last answers La Vallière, when she has recovered her breath, "can you tell me the way to Chaillot? I want to go to the convent." Now, Chaillot was a convent founded by Henrietta Maria, Queen of England, situated between Saint-Germain and Paris, no vestige of which now remains.