, a French lady of fashion, remarkable for simplicity of heart,
, a
French lady of fashion, remarkable for simplicity of heart,
and regularity of manners, but of an enthusiastic and unsettled temper, was descended of a noble family, and born
atMontargis, April 13, 1648. At the age of seven she was
sent to the convent of the Ursulines, where one of her
sisters by half-blood took care of her. She had afforded
proofs of an enthusiastic species of devotion from her
earliest infancy, and bad made so great a progress in what her
biographers call “the spiritual course
” at eight years of age,
as surprized the confessor of the queen mother of England,
widow of Charles I. who presented her to that princess, by
whom she would have been retained, had not her parents opposed it, and sent her back to the Ursulines. She wished
then to take the habit; but they having promised her to a
gentleman in the country, obliged her to marry him. At
twenty-eight years of age she became a widow, being left
with two infant sons and a daughter, of whom she was constituted guardian; and their education, with the management of her fortune, became her only employment. She
had put her domestic affairs into such order, as shewed an
uncommon capacity; when of a sudden she was struck with
an impulse to abandon every worldly care, and give herself
up to serious meditation, in which she thought the whole
of religion was comprised.