History repeating itself

As a historian myself, I sometimes come across delightful and even wonderful stories.  That of the two ladies three hundred years apart called Louise de la Valliere and Eve Lavalliere respectively intrigues me.  Louise de la Valliere was a Duchess and mistress of the French King Louis XIV who abandoned the Court to become a Carmelite in 1674.  She died in 1710.  In her days at Court she had given her name to a particular style of removable collar that she wore.  (It is still known as the lavalliere collar.)  Eve Lavalliere (1864-1929) was known at birth as Eugenie Marie Pascaline Fenoglio.  She endured the unspeakable trauma in her childhood of seeing her father shoot her mother.  Later she acquired the nickname ‘Lavalliere’ from her workmates because she habitually wore this style of collar.  Then she went on stage and used Eve Lavalliere as her stage name.  She became a huge star and had many suitors.  The extraordinary thing is that she underwent a conversion experience in 1917 and conceived the desire to imitate her namesake in becoming a Carmelite.  There the resemblance ends because her request to enter Carmel was eventually refused (perhaps on grounds of her poor health) and so she became a Third Order Franciscan and devoted herself to helping with missions in North Africa.      

Intercessions:

Brian Davis - cancer

Marie, Bernard (and wife Angela) - cancer

Agnes – in a hospice

Siena, Elara – sick children

Rosemarie – seriously ill

Wojtek – massive heart attack leaving him incapacitated

David - housebound

Sophia – blind infant