"A nun! Louise! Impossible; it must be some joke of her sisters!"
"Not at all," replied the palatine; "there is no joke about it, I swear to you."
"How has she got this passion for the cloister?" asked the regent, beginning to believe in the truth of what his mother told him, accustomed as he was to live at a time when the most extravagant things were always the most probable.
"Where did she get it?" replied madame; "why, from the devil, I suppose; I do not know where else she could have got it. The day before yesterday she passed with her sister, riding, shooting, laughing; in fact, I had never seen her so gay; but this evening Madame d'Orleans sent for me. I found Mademoiselle de Chartres at her mother's knees, in tears, and begging permission to retire to the Abbey des Chelles. Her mother turned to me, and said, 'What do you think of this, madame?' 'I think,' I replied, 'that we can perform our devotions equally well in any place and that all depends on our own preparations;' but hearing my words, Mademoiselle de Chartres redoubled her prayers, and with so much earnestness that I said to her mother, 'It is for you to decide.' 'Oh,' replied the duchess, 'we cannot prevent this poor child from performing her devotions.' 'Let her go then,' I replied, 'and may God grant that she goes in that intention.' 'I swear to you, madame,' said Mademoiselle de Chartres, 'that I go for God alone, and that I am influenced by no worldly idea.' Then she embraced us, and yesterday morning at seven o'clock she set out."
"I know all that, since I was to have taken her there," replied the regent. "Has nothing happened since then?"
"Yes, yesterday evening she sent back the carriage, giving the coachman a letter addressed to you, to her mother, and to me, in which she says that finding in the cloister that tranquillity and peace which she cannot hope for in the world, she does not wish to leave it."
"And what does her mother say to this resolution?"
"Her mother!" replied madame. "To tell you the truth, I believe her mother is very glad, for she likes convents, and thinks it a great piece of good-luck to have a daughter a nun; but I say there is no happiness where there is no vocation."
The regent read and re-read the letter of Mademoiselle de Chartres, trying to discover, by the expression of her desire to remain at Chelles, the secret causes which had given rise to it. Then, after an instant of meditation, as deep as if the fate of empires depended on it: