The revelations of the OEil de Boeuf, during the reign of Louis XV.,
form one of the most amazing pictures of wickedness, venality, power
misapplied, genius polluted, that was ever drawn. No one that reads that
infamous book can wonder at the revolution of 1789. Let us conceive
Saint-Simon to have taken his stand here, in this region, pure in the
time of Louis XIV., comparatively, and note we down his comments on men
and women.
He has journeyed up to court from La Trappe, which has fallen into
confusion and quarrels, to which the most saintly precincts are
peculiarly liable.
The history of Mademoiselle de la Valliere was not, as he tells us, of
his time. He hears of her death, and so indeed does the king, with
emotion. She expired in 1710, in the Rue St. Jacques, at the Carmelite
convent, where, though she was in the heart of Paris, her seclusion from
the world had long been complete. Amongst the nuns of the convent none
was so humble, so penitent, so chastened as this once lovely Louise de
la Valliere, now, during a weary term of thirty-five years, 'Marie de la
Misericorde.' She had fled from the scene of her fall at one-and-thirty
years of age. Twice had she taken refuge among the 'blameless vestals,'
whom she envied as the broken-spirited envy the passive.
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