It has seemed to me as if you desired that I should write to you on all things that might be of consequence to your establishment. I place in that rank the representations of the beautiful tragedies I caused to be written for you,[20] and which may in the future be imitated. My object was to avoid the miserable compositions of nuns, such as I saw at Noisy. I thought it was judicious and necessary to amuse children; I have always seen it done in places where they are collected; but I wished while amusing those of Saint-Cyr to fill their minds with fine things of which they would not be ashamed when they entered the world; I wished to teach them to pronounce properly; to occupy them in a way that would withdraw them from conversations with one another, and especially to amuse the elder ones, who from fifteen to twenty years of age get rather weary of the life at Saint-Cyr. These are my reasons for still continuing the representations, provided your superiors [meaning the Bishop of Chartres and the confessors] do not forbid them. But you must keep them entirely confined to your own house, and never let them be seen by outside persons under any pretext whatever. It is always dangerous to allow men to see well-made girls who add to the charms of their person by acting well what they represent. Therefore do not, I say, permit the presence of any man, whoever he may be, poor, rich, young or old, priest or secular,--I would even say a saint, if there were such on earth. All that can be allowed, if one of the superiors [priests] insists on judging the performance, is to let the youngest children act a play before him--as, in fact, we have already done. _To Mme. de Gruel_ [head mistress of the Reds]. March, 1701. You admire too much what I do for your class, but nevertheless, such as it is you do not imitate it enough. You talk to your children with a stiffness, a gloominess, a brusqueness which will close their hearts. They should feel that you love them, that you are grieved by their faults for their own sake, and that you are full of hope that they will correct themselves; you should take them expertly, encourage them, praise them, in a word, employ all means except roughness--which will never lead any one to God. You are too rigidly of a piece, very proper to live with saints, but you ought to know how to adapt yourself, to be every sort of person, and especially a kind mother to a large family, all of whom are equally dear to her.