The king forgot La Vallière as completely as if he had never seen her or known her in his life. She had as many virtues as the Montespan had vices. The sole weakness that she had for the king was very excusable. The king was young, gallant, and handsome; she herself very young; all the world led her and drove her to her fault. At bottom she was modest and virtuous, with a most kind heart. I told her sometimes that she had transposed her love and carried to God just that which she had for the king. They did her the utmost injustice in accusing her of loving any one but the king--but lies cost the Montespan nothing. It was at her instigation that the king so ill-treated La Vallière. The poor creature's heart was pierced; but she fancied she was offering the greatest sacrifice to God in immolating to him the source of her sin on the very spot where the sin was committed. Therefore, she stayed on, as penance, with the Montespan. The latter, who had more cleverness, laughed at her publicly, treated her ill, and made the king do likewise. Yet she bore it with patience. Her glance had a charm that can never be described; she had a graceful figure, but her teeth were vile; her eyes seemed to me much more beautiful than those of Mme. de Montespan; her whole bearing was modesty itself. She limped slightly, but it was not unbecoming. When the king made her a duchess and legitimatized her children she was in despair, for she thought till then that no one knew she had them. When I came to France she had not yet retired to a convent; in fact, she remained two years longer at Court. We became intimately acquainted at the time she took the veil. I was greatly touched to see that charming creature persist in her resolution, and when they put her beneath the pall I wept so bitterly I could not see the rest. When the ceremony was over she came to me to comfort me, and told me that I ought to congratulate her and not pity her because she was beginning, from that instant, to be happy; she said she should never in her life forget the favour and friendship I had shown to her, which she had never deserved to receive from me. Shortly after, I went to see her again; I was curious to know why she had remained so long as a servant to the Montespan. God, she told me, had touched her heart, and had given her to know her sin; she then thought that she ought to do penance and suffer in the way most painful to her,--that of sharing the king's heart with another, and seeing him despise her. During the three years that the king's love was ceasing she had suffered like a lost soul, and had offered to God her sorrow in expiation of her past sin, because, having sinned publicly, she thought her repentance should be public also. They had taken her, she said, for a silly fool who noticed nothing, and it was precisely then that she suffered most, until God put into her mind to leave all and serve Him only, which she had now done, although on account of her vices she was not worthy