in full dress or in a man’s wig and riding-habit.”

He concludes his portrait admirably in these words: “The figure and rusticity of a Swiss, but capable withal of a tender and inviolable friendship.”

Introduced at Court by her aunt, the illustrious Princess Palatine, Anne of Gonzaga, in nothing was she in keeping with it,—neither in spirit, nor in the gifts of insinuation and conciliatory conduct, nor in caution. Succeeding the first Madame, she seemed even farther aloof from it, more completely a contrast in manners, in the quality and turn of her thoughts, in delicacy, in short, in everything. Madame, throughout her life, was, and must necessarily have been, the contrary of many things and many persons about her; she was original, at any rate, and in all ways Herself.

It seems an irony of fate that gave as second wife to Monsieur, that prince so weak and so effeminate, a woman who in tastes was far more like a man, and who always regretted she was not born a boy. Madame gayly relates how, in her youth, feeling her vocation as a cavalier very strongly, she was always expecting some miracle of Nature in her favour. With this idea she devoted herself as much as she could to all manly exercises and perilous leaping. She cared much more for swords and guns than for dolls. But above all she proves how little of a woman’s nature was in her by the want of delicacy, or, to speak plainly, the lack of modesty in what she says. She is honesty itself, virtue, fidelity, honour; but also, at times, indecency and coarseness personified. She speaks of everything indiscriminately, like a man, is never disgusted by any language, and never goes by four roads when she has to express something which would be difficult and embarrassing to any one but herself. Contrary to the nature of women, she has no desire to please, and no coquetry. Being asked one day why she never glanced into a mirror in passing it, “Because,” she replied, “I have too much self-love to like to see how ugly I am.” The fine portrait by Rigaud gives us a perfect likeness of her in her old age, portly, fat, a double chin and red cheeks, with dignity of carriage nevertheless, and a proud bearing, but an expression of kindness in the eyes and smile.[1] She herself was pleased at times to record her ugliness; one might even suppose that she valued it.

“It is no matter whether one is handsome or not; a fine face changes soon, but a good conscience is always good. You must remember very little of me if you do not rank me among the ugly ones; I have always been so, and I am more so now because of the small-pox. My waist is monstrous in size; I am as square as a cube; my skin is red, mottled with yellow; my hair is getting gray; my nose is honeycombed with the small-pox, and so are my cheeks; I have a large mouth and bad teeth; and there’s the portrait of my pretty face.”

Certainly no one was ever ugly with more spirit and light-heartedness. Occasionally there slips in beneath Madame’s pen and her expressions a natural vein of Rabelais and the grotesque. She fills in that way a unique corner in the Court of Louis XIV. Knowing well what was due to her rank and never departing from it, there are many occasions when she is incongruous with it and violates decorum.

It was perhaps by this naïve brusqueness, and also by her solid qualities as an honest woman (I was going to say an honest man), that she pleased Louis XIV., so that between herself and him there was formed a friendship which was not without its singularity, and which at first sight seems surprising. Mme. de Sévigné, in a letter to her daughter, seems to think that Madame felt for Louis XIV. (as the preceding Madame had done) an inclination that was more or less romantic, and which affected her without her admitting to herself exactly what it was. There is a little too much that is far-fetched in all this. In general, as I have already remarked, Mme. de Sévigné understands Madame very little, and does not give herself the trouble to seek the meaning of a nature so little French. When she hears that the princess fainted with grief at the sudden news of the death of her father, the Elector Palatine, Mme. de Sévigné jests about it thus: “On this, Madame began to cry and weep and make a strange noise; they said she fainted, but I do not believe it; she seems to me incapable of that sign of weakness. All that death could do would be to sober her spirits,”—fixer ses esprits, because ses esprits (in the language of the physics of the day) were always in movement and great agitation.

But let us leave for a moment such French pleasantry and this facility for trifling with everything and over-refining all things. Madame, married in so sad and hapless a manner, and with whom one had only to talk, it was said, to be disgusted at once with the painful conditions of marriage,—Madame was not the woman to fall back upon romance to console her for reality. Thrown into the midst of a brilliant but false Court, full at that time of gallantry and pleasures which merely covered ambitions and rivalries, she distinguished with an instinct of good sense and a certain pride of race the person to whom she could attach herself in the midst of all these people, and she turned with her natural uprightness to the most honest man among them, namely, to Louis XIV. himself. A Jesuit, who pronounced a funeral oration over Madame, Père Cathalan, has said on this subject all that was best to say. In the kingdom at that time was a king who was worthy of being one; with the good qualities we know well, combined with defects which every one about him sought to favour and encourage; a king who was essentially a man of merit, “always master and always king, but more of an honest man and Christian than he was master or king.”

“It was this merit that touched her,” says Père Cathalan, very truly. “A taste for, and, if I may so express myself, a sympathy of greatness attached Madame to Louis XIV. Inward affinities make noble attachments of esteem and respect; and great souls, though the features of their greatness may differ, feel, and resemble one another. She esteemed, she honoured, shall I venture to say she loved that great king because she was great herself. She loved him when he was greater than his fortunes; she loved him still more when he was greater than his sorrows. We saw her giving to the dying monarch her bitter tears, giving them again to his memory, seeking him in that superb palace so filled with his presence and his virtues, saying often how she missed him, and feeling always the wound of his death,—a sentiment which the glory of her son, the regent, could never take away.”

Madame was agreeable to Louis XIV. by her frankness, her open nature; she amused him with her repartees and her lively talk; she made him laugh with all his heart, for (a rare thing at Courts) she liked joy for joy’s sake. “Joy is very good for the health,” thought she; “the silliest thing is to be sad.” She broke the monotony of Court ceremony, the long silent meals, the slow minuets of all kinds. What would have been incongruous in others had a certain spice in her; she had her privileges. “When the king dislikes to say a thing directly to any one, he addresses his speech to me; he knows very well that I don’t constrain myself in conversation, and that diverts him. At table he is obliged to talk with me because nobody else will say a word.”

She was not so inferior to the king as might be thought; or rather she was not inferior to him at all except in politeness, in moderation, in the spirit of consistency and