he bust and shoulders in
those days, when the ladies of the court left so little to the
imagination of the amorous monarch on whose heart so many of them had
designs, must have impaired the effect meant to have been achieved by
the indelicate exposure; for--hear it ye fair dames, with whose snowy
busts and dimpled shoulders the eyes of your male acquaintance are as
familiar as with your faces!--the charms of nature, however beautiful,
fall short of the ideal perfection accorded to them by the imagination,
when unseen. The clever Maintenon, aware of this fact, of which the
less wise of her sex are ignorant or forgetful, afforded a striking
contrast in her dress to the women around her, and piquing first the
curiosity, and then the passions, of the old libertine, acquired an
influence over him when she had long passed the meridian of her
personal attractions, which youthful beauties, who left him no room to
doubt their charms, or to exaggerate them as imagination is prone to
do, could never accomplish.

This very pincushion, with its red velvet heart stuck with pins, was
probably a gift from the enamoured Louis, and meant to be symbolical of
the state of his own; which, in hardness, it might be truly said to
resemble. It may have often been placed on her table when Maintenon was
paying the penalty of her hard-earned greatness by the painful task of
endeavouring--as she acknowledged--to amuse a man who was no longer
amusable.

Could it speak, it might relate the wearisome hours passed in a palace
(for the demon _Ennui_ cannot be expelled even from the most brilliant;
nay, prefers, it is said, to select them for his abode), and we should
learn, that while an object of envy to thousands, the mistress, or
unacknowledged wife of _le Grand Monarque_, was but little more happy
than the widow of Scarron when steeped in poverty.

Madame de Maintenon discovered what hundreds before and since have
done--that splendour and greatness cannot confer happiness; and, while
trying to amuse a man who, though possessed of sovereign power, has
lost all sense of enjoyment, must have reverted, perhaps with a sigh,
to the little chamber in which she so long soothed the sick bed of the
witty octogenarian, Scarron; who, gay and cheerful to the last, could
make her smile by his sprightly and _spirituelles_ sallies, which
neither the evils of poverty nor pain could subdue.

Perhaps this pincushion has lain on her table when Madame de Maintenon