n his apartments; and
when jealous of the queen, for whom he had a kind of devouring
passion, he treated her with great brutality, till she acquired
sufficient finesse to subjugate him. Is it then surprising that a
very desirable woman, with a sanguine constitution, should shrink,
abhorrent, from his embraces; or that an empty mind should be
employed only to vary the pleasures which emasculated her Circean
court? And, added to this, the histories of the Julias and
Messalinas of antiquity convincingly prove that there is no end to
the vagaries of the imagination, when power is unlimited, and
reputation set at defiance.

"Lost, then, in the most luxurious pleasures, or managing court
intrigues, the queen became a profound dissembler; and her heart
was hardened by sensual enjoyments to such a degree that, when her
family and favorites stood on the brink of ruin, her little portion
of mind was employed only to preserve herself from danger. As a
proof of the justness of this assertion, it is only necessary to
observe that, in the general wreck, not a scrap of her writing has
been found to criminate her; neither has she suffered a word to
escape her to exasperate the people, even when burning with rage
and contempt. The effect that adversity may have on her choked
understanding, time will show [this was written some months before
the death of the queen]; but, during her prosperity, the moments of
languor that glide into the interstices of enjoyment were passed in
the most childish manner, without the appearance of any vigor of
mind to palliate the wanderings of the imagination. Still, she was
a woman of uncommon address; and though her conversation was
insipid, her compliments were so artfully adapted to flatter the
person she wished to please or dupe, and so eloquent is the beauty
of a queen, in the eyes even of superior men, that she seldom
failed to carry her point when she endeavored to gain an ascendency
over the mind of an individual. Over that of the king she acquired
unbounded sway, when, managing the disgust she had for his person,
she made him pay a kingly price for her favors. A court is the best
school in the world for actors; it was very natural then for her to
become a complete actress, and an adept in all the arts of coquetry
that deb