Louis XIV. and Mme. de Maintenon believed in the efficacy of prayer, especially that of Saint-Cyr. "Make yourselves saints," says the foundress to her daughters repeatedly throughout the long series of calamitous wars,--"make yourselves saints in order to gain us peace." And towards the end, when a ray of victory returned, she mingles a sort of gayety with the solemnity of her hope. "It would be shameful in our Superior," she writes, "if she could not raise the siege of Landrecies by force of prayers: it is for great souls to do great things." During the last years of Louis XIV. Mme. de Maintenon was happy only when she could go to Saint-Cyr, "to hide and comfort herself." She said it again and again, under all forms and in all tones: "My great consoler is Saint-Cyr."--"Vive Saint-Cyr! in spite of its defects one is better here than elsewhere in all the world." She had tasted of all and was surfeited of all. In spite of her dazzling position, and at the very summit, apparently, she was one of those delicate natures that are more sensitive to the secret animosities of the world than to its grosser offerings. Surrounded at Versailles by men who did not like her and by women she despised, reading their hearts through their self-interested homage and cringing baseness, worn-out with fatigue and constraint in presence of the king and the royal family, who used and abused her, she went to Saint-Cyr to relax, to moan, to let fall the mask that she wore perpetually. There she was respected, cherished, and obeyed; when absent, her letters read at recreation were the pride of the one who had received them and the joy of all; when present, the mistresses and pupils concerted together to awaken her souvenirs and induce her to tell of her beginnings and the singular incidents of her fortune,--in short, to make her talk of herself; that topic to all of us so restful and so sweet. "We love to talk of ourselves," she remarked, "were it even to say harm." But she never said harm. If it is painful, as she said in after years, to last too long, to live in a society of persons who do not know us or the life that we have led in former days, who are, in short, of another epoch, it is nevertheless very pleasant to retreat to a garden bench and find ourselves surrounded by fresh young souls, docile in letting themselves be trained, and eager for all that we will say to them. Do not let us analyze too closely the various sentiments of Mme. de Maintenon at Saint-Cyr; suffice it to say that the effect on all who surrounded her was fruitful and good.