She had
loved the man so dearly, had made so many sacrifices for him, had
counted so fondly on the devotion of her whole future life to him, that
the first discovery of his coldness towards her broke her spirit at once
and for ever. She fell into a condition of hopeless melancholy, looked
back with remorse and horror at her past life, and abandoned the stage
and the society in which she had lived, to end her days repentantly in
the character of a Carmelite nun.
So far, her history is the history of hundreds of other women before her
time and after it. The prominent interest of her life, for the student
of human nature, lies in the story of her conversion, as told by
herself. The greater part of the narrative--every page of which is more
or less characteristic of the Frenchwoman of the eighteenth century--may
be given, with certain suppressions and abridgments, in her own words.
The reader will observe, at the outset, one curious fact. Mademoiselle
Gautier does not so much as hint at the influence which the loss of her
lover had in disposing her mind to reflect on serious subjects. She
describes her conversion as if it had taken its rise in a sudden
inspiration from Heaven. Even the name of Quinault Dufresne is not once
mentioned from one end of her narrative to the other.
On the twenty-fifth of April, seventeen hundred and twenty-two (writes
Mademoiselle Gautier), while I was still leading a life of
pleasure--according to the pernicious ideas of pleasure which pass
current in the world--I happen to awake, contrary to my usual custom,
between eight and nine o'clock in the morning.
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