details, we can easily vamp up a portrait of this
terrible old lady. She must have been an exact
royal Skewton, snuffy, double-chinued, rouged,
patched to the eyes, with wicked old eyes, and
daubed profusely with the fashionable dye or
pearl powder existing in those days. She can
scarcely have been lean or skinny, this terrible
old lady, for she reads good humouredly and
delivers her little tit-bits of scandal with a chuckle
and raciness significant of abundant fat and
ancient fleshiness. She must have been famous
company, this superannuated duchess. On an
ottoman in a corner she could have put out her
snuffy fingers as the doubtful gallants and more
doubtful ladies passed her by at Versailles, and
could have touched off a series of the most racy
little biographies, not such certainly as the late
Mrs. Hannah More or Mrs. Elizabeth Fry could
have listened to.

It is not too much to say, that the "remains"
of this terrible old lady are about the most
entertaining of the whole French memoir
literature. The little defect, common enough to old
ladies, does indeed crop up, possibly somewhat
in excess; yet this may be on the whole taken
to be their charm. For it is developed in so
naïve and natural a fashion, and is so outspeaking
of the original character of the person — who, it
must be recollected, is an old lady — that it is
impossible to frown, and play prude or moralist.

However, about the year seventeen hundred
and twenty-two the terrible old lady was called
away to account, as well as she might be able, for
her long course of gossipings and scandals. It
is recorded that she made an edifying end, as,
somehow, all terrible old ladies contrive to do.
But if we are to rely for this view of her happy
departure on the same partial testimony that lias
summarised her life, even the most enthusiastic
admirers of such conversions will be filled with
awkward doubts; for a faithful chronicler has
written of that scene, "her solid piety, her
generosity, the nobleness of her sentiments, had
attracted to her the admiration of all, and had
brought her to a pitch of perfection almost too
exalted for the common run of women to hope
to reach to. The night before her death she
had a very touching interview with her son the
Regent de- no doubt with a view to persuade him
to fix his thoughts on a higher and better world
than this!"

There was a certain Madame Maintenon, with
whom we are tolerably familiar de- Queen
Maintenon, as the settled opinion now seems to be—
whom the terrible old lady hated with her whole
terrible old soul. If there be one thing that a
terrible old lady loathes, it is a devout old lady,
whom she of course suspects to be an ingrained
hypocrite. It is a favourite bit of food for
French sarcasm, that turning of ladies of easy
life into saints as they grow old. It is held to
be the fit and correct supplement. She seems
to have writhed under the absolute supremacy
of this royal nurse and secret wife, and grows livid
in her letters whenever she has to speak of her.

She is always "the old one;" or, if she be
specially wroth with her, the terrible old lady super-adds
an unhandsome substantive never more than
delicately hinted at in our tongue by such
indistinct sign as an initial and a dash. "This old
lady," she writes with a suitable profanity, "on
the nineteenth of November, seventeen hundred
and eighteen, was held in such awe at court, that
they would sooner have offended God than her."
Later she writes, "I made my son laugh
heartily the day before yesterday. I asked, How was
Madame de Maintenon wearing?' 'Wonderfully,'
  he answered. 'How can that be, at her
age?' I said. 'Surely, you know,' he answered,
'that the devil is an immortal being?' ' Then,'
I answer, 'he must have done some fresh sin for
the bon Dieu to have forced him to live so long
in such a villanous carcase.'" Taking her own
photograph of this son, Regent Philip, it is to
be suspected that is about the most harmless of
the jokes with which she was accustomed to
make him laugh. The terrible old lady loved
quips of a bolder and broader complexion. "No
one," the terrible old lady goes on, "could carry
perfumes; the king could not endure them."
But " he old one" always wore gloves scented
"with jasmine, and persuaded him that it was such
or such one near him that was then perfumed."

She concedes that "the old one wept" a
good deal at the death of the king; but she
was not near so afflicted as she ought to
have been. "She always looked forward to
reigning with her pupil, the Duke de Maine." She
had, however, the merit of inspiring attachment
in her followers, for "the Humpy Fagon, a
special protégé" of the old——, always said
the only thing he disliked in Christianity was
the impossibility of erecting churches and altars
to Madame to worship her." Even after her
death she would not forgive. "I always have
it in my head," she writes, "that what caused
the old—— the greatest chagrin in dying, was
the leaving my son and myself well off, and in
good health."

She was a darkly suspicious old lady, and
scented plots against herself from afar off. "The
old one" was always busy poisoning the king's
mind against her. A gentleman, whose name she
will not mention, had told her that "with his
own 'ears' he had often heard the 'old one'
instilling into the king every possible evil about her
— actually tormenting the king to hate me." On
his death-bed, that monarch said to her
"Madame, they have done all they could to make me
hate you. But I knew you too well for such
calumny to do you the slightest harm witli me."
Madame de Maintenon, "who was standing by,
had such a guilty look, that I had not an instant's
doubt but that this was meant for her."

There is a very pretty picture drawn even
by such a coarse touch of the princess who
was called "the Little Dauphiness." A more
lively engaging bit of royalty 'has not been
presented to the student of history. She
unhappily died early, it was said through pure
medical mismanagement. But our terrible old lady
hints very plainly at another very sufficient
cause. " The old—— bore so inveterate an
hatred to this poor child, that it has always