terrible storm, the remains
of the glorious Mme. de Pompadour were being taken to Paris, the king,
seeing the funeral cortege from his window, remarked: "The Marquise
will not have fine weather for her journey."

Each one of these powerful mistresses represents a complete epoch of
society, morals, and customs. Mme. de Montespan--that woman whose
very look meant fortune or disfavor--with all her wit and wealth, her
magnificence and pomp and superb beauty--she, in all her splendor, is
a type of the triumphant France, haughty, dictatorial, scornful
and proud, licentious and decayed at the core. Voluptuousness and
haughtiness were replaced by religiosity and repentance in Mme. de
Maintenon, with her temperate character, consistency, and propriety.

The Regency was a period of scandal and wantonness, personified in the
Duchess of Berry. The licentious and extravagant, yet brilliant and
exquisite, frivolous but charming, intriguing and diplomatic, was
represented by the talented and politically influential Mme. de
Pompadour. Complete degeneracy, vice with all manner of disguise
thrown off, adultery of the lowest order, were personified in the
common Mme. du Barry, who might be classed with Louise of Savoy of
the sixteenth century, while Mme. de Pompadour might be compared with
Diana of Poitiers.

In this period the queens of France were of little importance, being
too timid and modest to assert their rights--a disposition which was
due sometimes to their restricted youth, spent in Catholic countries,
sometimes to a naturally unassuming and sensitive nature. To this rule
Maria Theresa, the wife of Louis XIV., was no exception. She inherited
her sweetness of disposition and her Christian character from her
mother, Isabella of France, the daughter of Henry IV. and Marie de'
Medici. She was pure and candid; a type of irreproachable piety and
goodness, of conjugal tenderness and maternal love; and recompensed
outraged morality for all the false pride, selfish ambition,
depravity, and scandals of court. She is conspicuous as a model wife,
one that loved her husband, her family, and her children.

Around Maria Theresa may be grouped the noble and virtuous women of
the court of Louis XIV., for she was to that age what Claude of France
was under Francis I., Elizabeth of Austria under Charles V., Louise de
Vaudemont under Henry III. However, in extolling these women, it
must be remembered that they had not, as queens, the opportun