Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/640

626 few, but beautiful; and those, after once reading to her friends, she committed to the flames. She was chosen abbess-general of the congregation of Fontevrard, which presides over a great number of monasteries, and counted among its abbesses 14 princesses, five of the house of Bourbon. This high office she discharged with great ability.

deprived of her father and mother, who both left France while she was an infant, she was brought up under the care of the queen, her grandmother, who appointed Madame de Saint George (a woman of great learning) to be her governess.

Mademoiselle wrote her memoirs in 6 vols; in which she has not only related every circumstance relative to the intrigues of the court and parliament, but of her own life, in which are many things very remarkable. She was a woman of good parts, quick discernment, of a majestic appearance, haughty, and imperious. Her turn for military exercises was an extraordinary part of her character. At the time when disputes ran high at the court of France, the town of Orleans (which belonged to the duke her lather) was just upon the point of submitting to the king's party, of which Mademoiselle de Montpensier was no sooner informed, than she set out immediately from Paris, marched in person at the head of a small number of troops, and forced the inhabitants, not only to open their gates, but to join with the parliament,