Mlle. de La Valliere remained three years at court, “half penitent,” she said, humbly, detained by the king’s express wish, in consequence of the tempers and jealousies of Mme. de Montespan who felt herself judged and condemned by her rival’s repentance.  Attempts were made to turn Mlle. de La Valliere from her inclination for the Carmelites’:  “Madame,” said Mme. Scarron to her, one day, “here are you one blaze of gold; have you really considered that, before long, at the Carmelites’ you will have to wear serge?” She, however, was not to be dissuaded from her determination and was already practising, in secret, the austerities of the convent.  “God has laid in this heart the foundation of great things,” said Bossuet, who supported her in her conflict; “the world puts great hindrances in her way, and God great mercies; I have hopes that God will prevail; the uprightness of her heart will carry everything before it.”

“When I am in trouble at the Carmelites’,” said Mlle. de La Valliere, as for the last time she quitted the court, “I shall think of what those people have made me suffer.”  “The world itself makes us sick of the world,” said Bossuet in the sermon which he preached on the day she took the veil; “its attractions have enough of illusion, its favors enough of inconstancy, its rebuffs enough of bitterness.  There is enough of bitterness, enough of injustice and perfidy in the dealings of men, enough of inconsistency and capriciousness in their intractable and contradictory humors—­there is enough of it all, to disgust us.”

When, in 1675, she took the final vows, she cut off her beautiful hair and devoted herself to the church and to charity, receiving the veil from the queen, whose forgiveness she sought before entering the convent.  The king showed himself to be such a jealous lover, that when Mlle. de La Valliere entirely abandoned him for God, he forgot her absolutely, never going to the convent to see her.

She was by far the most interesting and pathetic of the three mistresses of Louis XIV.; her heart was superior to that of either of her successors, though her mind was inferior; she belonged to a different atmosphere—­such kindness, charity, penitence, resignation, and absolute abandonment to God were rare among the conspicuous French women.  Sainte-Beuve says:  “She loved for love, without haughtiness, coquetry, arrogance, ambitious designs, self-interest, or vanity; she suffered and sacrificed everything, humiliated herself to expiate her wrong-doing, and finally surrendered herself to God, seeking in prayer the treasures of energy and tenderness; through her heart, her mental powers attained their complete development.”

The fate of Mlle. de La Valliere was the same as that of nearly all royal mistresses; abandoned and absolutely forgotten by her lover, she sought refuge and consolation in religion and God’s mercy.  “She was dead to me the day she entered the Carmelites’,” said the king, thirty-five years later, when the modest and fervent nun at last expired, in 1710, without having ever relaxed the severities of her penance.