Daughter of a man of parts who might become a minister and give back the clergy their forests, Mile, de La Mole had been an object of the most excessive flattery at the Convent of the Sacred Heart. The harm done this way can never be offset. She had been persuaded that with all her advantages of birth, fortune, etc., she ought to be happier than anyone else. This notion is the source of the boredom of princes, and of all their follies.

Mathilde had not escaped the baneful influence of this idea. However intelligent one may be, one cannot at ten be on one's guard against the flattery, apparently so wellfounded, of a whole convent.