Letter to Madame de Fontaines, September 20, 1691 said:

"The disappointment that I feel in the girls of Saint-Cyr can only be healed by time and by a total change in the education we have given them up to this time. It is just that I would suffer for this since I have contributed to the harm more than any one, and I shall be happy if God does not punish me more severely. My own pride has spread all over the house and its depth is so great that it has overcome even my good intentions.

God knows that I wanted to establish virtue at at Saint-Cyr; yet I have built on sand. Lacking what was necessary to provide a solid foundation, I wanted the girls to be witty, to elevate their courage, to develop their reason. I have succeeded. They are smart and use it against us; they are high-spirited and are more vain and haughty than would be proper for the highest princesses.

As the world says, we developed their reason and turned them into presumptuous, over-curious, and contentious squabblers. This is how one succeeds when one is moved by the desire to excel. A plain, Christian education would have made good girls from whom we would have fashioned good wives and good nuns, but we have formed clever minds that even we, who have formed them, cannot tolerate. This is our illness for which I am responsible more than anyone else."

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