PARIS, August 5, 1684.
While I am expecting your letters, I must relate to you a very amusing
little history. You remember how much you regretted Mademoiselle de
***, and how unfortunate you thought yourself in having missed her for
a wife: “Your best friends had all conspired against your happiness;
Madame de Lavardin and Madame de la Fayette had done you irreparable
injury! A young lady of noble birth, great beauty, and ample fortune,
was lost to you; surely a man must be doomed never to marry, and to
die like a beggar, to let such an opportunity escape him, when it was
in his own power! The Marquis de *** was not such a fool; he has made
his fortune, and is settled. You must certainly have been born under
an unlucky planet to miss such a match! Only observe her conduct; she
is a saint; an example to all married women.” You remember all this, I
suppose, my dear son, and that till you married Mademoiselle de Mauron,
you were ready to hang yourself; you could not have done better than
you have done: but now for the sequel.
All those amiable qualities of her youth, which made Madame de la
Fayette say she would not have her for a daughter-in-law if she could
bring millions to her son, were happily directed to the service of
religion: God was her lover, the only object of her affection, all
her desires centered in this single passion; but as every thing was
in extremes with her, her poor head could not bear the excess of zeal
and fervent devotion with which it was filled; and, to satisfy the
overflowings of her Magdalen heart, she resolved to profit by good
examples, by reading the Lives of the Holy Fathers of the Desert,
and of Female Penitents. She wished to become herself the heroine
of such admirable histories, and, full of this idea, left her house
and family about a fortnight ago, and, taking with her only five or
six pistoles, and a little foot-boy, set out at four o’clock in the
morning, and, taking a post-chaise at the skirts of the town, drove to
Rouen, fatigued and covered with mud. When she got there, she bargained
for a passage in a ship bound for the Indies: it was there, it seems,
God had called her; it was there she was to lead a life of penitence
and humiliation; it was there the map had pointed out to her an abode,
which invited her to pass the rest of her days in sackcloth and ashes;
it was there the Abbé Zosimus[290] was to visit her, and administer
to her the last holy rites before she expired. Satisfied with this
resolution, and convinced that Heaven inspired her with it, she
discharged her foot-boy, and sent him home to his own country, while
she waited with great impatience the departure of the ship: her good
angel consoled her for the delay; she piously forgot husband, daughter,
father, and relations, exclaiming: