The mind and heart, however, of Anne de Bourbon, although predestined, alas! eventually to culpable passion, seemed at first but little inclined to the gay world--with all its blandishments and seductions, or even to its innocent pleasures. When quite a child she was in the habit of accompanying her mother in her visits to the convent of the Carmelites at Paris. For though still possessing great personal attractions, Madame de Conde had become serious and of a somewhat demonstrative piety. Those visits, which were frequent, strengthened Anne's gentle and susceptible mind in its tendency to devotion. The impression, too, which somewhat later the tragic fate of her uncle, the unfortunate Duke de Montmorency,[2] left on her memory, inspired her with the resolution to quit the outer world at the earliest possible moment, and, renouncing all its pomps and grandeurs, hide beneath the veil her budding attractions. Although her mother opposed an inflexible resistance to her embracing that holy vocation, and strove to combat by forcible arguments the cold and disdainful demeanour exhibited by her daughter when mixing in gay society, the fair girl persevered from the age of thirteen to seventeen in her longing to embrace the life of the cloister. Futile for a time were the parental arguments, unfruitful every effort! Anne Genevieve would not consort with worldlings, persisted in her distaste for mundane pleasures, and continued to cherish persistently her desire for conventual seclusion. At length the princess, in 1636, having resolved upon the adoption of more energetic measures, suddenly ordered her daughter to make preparations for appearing at a Court ball, and that, too, in three days. With what despair did the young princess hear the cruel sentence! What affliction, too, befell the Carmelite nuns when they heard of the fatal mandate. What a flood of sighs and tears and prayers! The good sisters gathered themselves together to take counsel one with another, and decided that, since Mdlle. de Bourbon could not avoid the wretched fate that awaited her, before going through the trying ordeal she should indue her lovely form with an undergarment of hair-cloth (commonly called a _cilice_), and, protected by such armour of proof, she might then fearlessly submit herself to all the temptations lurking beneath the ensnaring vanities of her Court attire. The _cilice_, however, did not, it seems, prove invulnerable as the aegis of Minerva, for the subtle shafts winged by homage and admiration pierced through that slight breast-plate to a heart which in truth was by nature framed to inspire and welcome both. The Princess de Conde rejoiced greatly at her daughter's conversion to more reasonable views of mundane existence. The commencement of her noviciate was no longer thought of, and her visits to the Carmelites became sufficiently rare. But it was only a deferment of that calm vocation, it being Anne de Bourbon's destiny to embrace it at the close