When the eyes have been fatigued by the glow of artificial lights, they willingly repose on soft and real daylight. After the haughty favorite, one likes to contemplate the good Queen. Comparisons made between the mistress and the legitimate wife are always to the advantage of the second. To one the agitations of a troubled conscience, to the other peace of heart; to one contempt, to the other respect; scandal to one, edification to the other. The Memoirs of the Duke de Luynes and of President Hénault make us acquainted with the qualities of Marie Leczinska, just as those of Madame du Hausset lay bare the moral plague spots of the Marquise de Pompadour. A solitary conclusion may be drawn from reading all of them; namely, that the Queen, neglected as she was, and in spite of the hidden rôle which contented her modesty, was, notwithstanding, less unhappy than the all-powerful favorite, who disposed of the monarchy as if it were a pension list. Each of them had her chagrins, but God gives us strength to endure the ills He sends us, while those we create for ourselves are intolerable. The heaviest chains are those we forge with our own hands. The list of suicides is a proof in support of this observation. Is there, for example, an affliction more profound than that of a mother who loses her child? Very well! you never hear that a woman has taken her life because she has had a grief like that. On the other hand, how many suicides there are among the victims of pride and sensuality! Religion alleviates the sorrows which are in the nature and order of things. But griefs which are in revolt against Providence, afflictions voluntarily created by criminal caprices, or insensate ambitions, have in them something inconsolable and incurable. Madame de Pompadour vainly sought an asylum for her soul.

The Queen found at the foot of altars such a strength that after kneeling before the image of our Saviour Jesus Christ, she could, on rising, drink the cup of bitterness without its leaving a trace upon her lips.

While the guilty mistress beheld with such spite and vexation the departure of her youth, the virtuous wife experienced neither pain nor regret at growing old. It is the privilege of honest women to accept the laws of our common destiny without a murmur, and not to attempt a foolish struggle against nature in the hope of repairing the irreparable ravages of years. The Marquise loaded her face, withered by anxieties, with rouge and powder, and exhausted all the science of a desperate coquetry in the effort to keep up an illusion. Marie Leczinska, on the contrary, did not entertain for a moment the thought of rejuvenating herself. Casanova, who was present at one of her dinners at Fontainebleau, represents her as “without rouge, simply dressed, her head covered with a large cap, old-looking and devout in aspect.” This wholly Christian simplicity was not without its charm. The Queen possessed not merely goodness but wit, and her qualities were reflected on her spiritual countenance without the least pettiness, venerable with no touch of moroseness. While Louis XV. and his mistresses were so sad, so disillusionized, so disenchanted with everything, though surrounded by all their voluptuous pleasures, Marie Leczinska never uttered a complaint. Gaiety was in reality the basis of her character, not that factitious, turbulent, ephemeral gaiety which vice knows for a moment, but that soft, continuous, unaffected, equable gaiety imparted by a serene disposition and a conscience in repose.

What an expression of soundness, of moral wellbeing! What patience with life, what sympathetic serenity! The Queen is interested in many things; she is fond of honest amusements. Unlike Louis XV., who is bored by everything, she has a taste for music; she paints a little, she embroiders, she plays the guitar, the hurdy-gurdy, the harpsichord; she willingly takes part in games of chance. President Hénault introduces us into the cabinet, whither she withdraws after having dined alone in public, in accordance with the formalities of etiquette: “Here,” he says, “we are in another climate; this is no longer the Queen, but a private person. Here one finds work of all descriptions, tapestry, arts of every sort, and while she is working she kindly tells us what she has been reading; she mentions the parts that have impressed her and appreciates them.”

Look at Latour’s pastel, so admirably described by Sainte-Beuve. “It is a half-length portrait of the Queen. She holds a closed fan in one hand; she turns toward the spectator like some one who is thinking, and who is going to say something arch, some innocent piece of slyness. Her hair is slightly powdered; on her head she wears a point of black lace, a sort of little fichu called a fanchonnette; a mantelet of pale blue silk, with puffings or ribbons of grayish white, the shades are so blended that they lose themselves in each other. A tranquil harmony pervades all the tones. The lips delicate, somewhat thin, turning up at the angles; the eye small and brilliant; the nose a trifle saucy,—everything in this countenance breathes gentleness, subtlety, archness. If you know neither her rank nor her name, you will say that this middle-aged person can certainly make a sound and appropriate repartee; that she has the grain of salt without bitterness.”

How many times, at Versailles, I have stopped for a while in the Queen’s bedchamber,[57] in that chamber which was occupied by Marie Leczinska from December 1, 1725, the day of her arrival at the palace of Louis XIV., until June 24, 1768, the day of her death! At the back of the former alcove, on the right, over a door which led to the small apartments of the Queen,[58] now hangs Nattier’s fine portrait of Marie Leczinska. The wife of Louis XV. is sitting down, dressed in a red gown bordered with fur, her arm leaning on a pier-table, on which lie the crown, the royal mantle, and a New Testament. There is nothing studied, nothing theatrical, in either the pose, the countenance, or the costume. It is a blending of kindliness and dignity. It is a queen, but a Christian queen.

After the pencil, the pen; after Nattier, Madame du Deffand. Listen to the famous Marquise, ordinarily so sarcastic:—

“Thémire has much wit, a sensitive heart, a kindly disposition, an interesting face. Her education has imprinted in her soul a piety so veritable that it has become a sentiment, and one which serves her to regulate all others. Thémire loves God, and next to him all that is lovable; she knows how to bring solid matters and agreeable ones into harmony. She occupies herself with each in turn, and sometimes combines them. Her virtues have, so to say, the germ and pungency of passions. To admirable purity of manners she joins extreme sensibility; to the greatest modesty a desire to please which would by itself achieve its object. Her discernment makes her penetrate all caprices and understand all follies; her goodness and charity make her endure them without impatience, and rarely permit her to laugh at them.... The respect she inspires is based rather on her virtues than her dignity. One has entire freedom of mind when with her; one owes it to the penetration and delicacy of hers. She understands so promptly and so subtly that it is easy to communicate to her whatever ideas one desires, without infringing the circumspection demanded by her rank. One forgets, on seeing Thémire, that there can be other grandeurs, other elevations, than those of her sentiments; one almost yields to the illusion that there is no interval between her and us than that of the superiority of her merits; but a fatal awakening acquaints us that this Thémire, so perfect, so amiable, is the Queen.”

No one was a more faithful friend than Marie Leczinska. The little circle amidst which she lived displayed as much affection as respect for her. After supper she went almost every evening to the apartment of the Duchess de Luynes, her lady of honor. There she met, besides the Duke and Duchess, Cardinal de Luynes, the Duke and Duchess de Chevreuse, and President Hénault. This was a time of recreation and pleasant talk. The learned president shone there by his wit. One day he offered the Queen the manuscript of his Abrégé chronologique. She returned it with the following words: “I think that M. Hénault, who says so many things in so few words, can hardly like the language of women who talk so much to say so little.” In lieu of signature, she had written: Devinez qui (Guess who). The gallant author replied at once:—

Another time, Fontenelle, then ninety-two years old, had addressed these verses to the President:—

After reading these verses, the Queen wrote to President Hénault: “Say to Fontenelle that a head like his ought to find Sparta everywhere.” The old man, very much flattered, responded by the following quatrain:—

The kindly, affectionate character of Marie Leczinska is fully displayed in the simple and friendly letters she addressed to the Duchess of Luynes, her lady of honor. We cite several of them taken at hazard:—

“December 22, 1750.—Nothing could give me a greater pleasure than your letter, if I did not expect one still more sensible in four weeks, that of seeing you. Nevertheless, it is true, that to give me news of yourself sometimes, if you can do so without injuring yourself, would help to alleviate a time which already seems very long to me. All I ask of you is not to be thankful for my friendship; it is wholly due to you. Your letter affected me to tears. Yes, God will preserve you as long as I live; I ask it of Him with all my heart. When I write to M. de Luynes, I say: ‘I embrace Madame de Luynes,’ but since it is to you for him, I think it more honest to beg you to take the trouble for me. And Monseigneur, what would he like? I think it would be better to enclose all in the benediction I ask for him.”

The Duke de Luynes had once sent the Queen a casket as a New-Year’s gift. Marie Leczinska thanked him in the following note, dated January 1, 1751: “It is useless to say the casket is charming, new in style, in a word, nothing so pretty in the world; one knows all that. But what one doesn’t know is that I am like a child with a plaything that pleases it. It pleases me with the same candor, except that the gratitude proceeds from a person who knows the world a little, and even at her own expense, and whom God has granted the grace of having amiable and estimable friends wholly corrupt though she is.”

Among other things the casket contained a pair of spectacles of which the good Queen’s eyes stood in need. “Here I am gay for the whole day from Madame de Luynes’ good-night,” she wrote to the Duke, January 2, 1751. “Do you know what I was doing when I received Monseigneur’s letter? I was with ... guess who? ... my fine new spectacles (les beaux yeux de ma cassette). Never did l’Avare love his own so much. I am hurrying to get to High Mass. I embrace Madame de Luynes, I bow before Monseigneur, and I wish you good-day.”

The Duchess’s shortest absences seemed like an eternity to Marie Leczinska. At such times she wrote letter on letter to her lady of honor, saying that long correspondences are the delights of friendship. Here is a letter which shows what a tender friend the Queen was. On receiving this heartfelt epistle, the Duchess de Luynes must have been profoundly affected:—

“January 23, 1751.—Do you know what pleasure I gave myself last evening? I went to surprise M. de Luynes in his apartment; I found him just as he had finished his supper with Monseigneur (the Bishop of Bayeux), in his pretty little room. I cannot tell you what joy I felt in seeing your apartment again; I rested there a moment in order to preserve it, for, not finding you there yet, I began to be afraid of what might succeed it. Pleasures which are only imaginary need to be taken care of. I impatiently await the real ones.”

To great goodness Marie Leczinska joined solid information. She knew six languages,—Polish, French, Italian, German, Swedish, Latin. Men of letters were struck by the shrewdness of her judgments on the things of the mind. Several of her maxims have been preserved, which attest a lofty soul and a profound knowledge of the human heart. Here are some of them: “We ought not to reflect more on the faults of others than will suffice to preserve ourselves from them.—Human wisdom teaches us to conceal our pride; religion alone destroys it.—To live peaceably in society, we must open our eyes to the qualities which please us, and shut them on the follies and caprices which shock us.—The women who pique themselves most on knowing what it is allowable for them to be ignorant of are those who care least about instructing themselves concerning what it is shameful not to know.—Many princes having regretted, when dying, that they had made war, we never see any who repented of having loved peace.—Good kings are slaves, and their people are free.—The only thing which can make amends for the slavery of the throne is the pleasure of doing some good.—In politics, as in morals, the shortest way to make men happy is to endeavor to make them virtuous.”

The sovereign who expressed such thoughts as these was not an ordinary woman. She surpasses all the favorites of her husband, not merely in heart and virtue, but also in intelligence, knowledge, and wit.