darkness to its last resting-place.

[Illustration: Madame Adelaide]

Pleasanter figures that haunt the Chateau are those of the six pretty
daughters of Louis and Marie Leczinska. There are the ill-starred twins,
Elizabeth and Henrietta: Madame Elizabeth, who never lost the love of
her old home, and, though married, before entering her teens, to the
Infanta of Spain, retired, after a life of disappointment, to her
beloved Versailles to die; and the gentle Henrietta who, cherishing an
unlucky passion for the young Duc de Chartres, pined quietly away after
witnessing her lover wed to another.

Then there is Adelaide, whom Nattier loved to paint, portraying her
sometimes as a lightly clad goddess, sometimes sitting demurely in a
pretty frock. Good Nattier! there is a later portrait of himself in
complacent middle age surrounded by his wife and children; but I like to
think that, when he spent so many days at the Palace painting the young
Princess, some tenderer influence than mere artistic skill lent cunning
to his brush.

When the daughters of Louis XV. were sent to be educated at a convent,
Adelaide it was who, by tearful protest to her royal father, gained
permission to remain at the Palace while her sisters meekly endured
their banishment. From this instance of childish character one would
have anticipated a career for Madame Adelaide, and I hate being obliged
to think of her merely developing into one of the three spinster aunts
of Louis XVI. who, residing under the same roof, turned coldly
disapproving eyes upon the manifold frailties of their niece, Marie
Antoinette.

The sisters Victoire and Sophie are faint shades leaving no impression
on the memory; but there is another spirit, clad in the sombre garb of a
Carmelite nun, who, standing aloof, looks with the calm eyes of peace on
the motley throng. It is Louise, the youngest sister of all, who, deeply
grieved by her father's infatuation for the Du Barry--an infatuation
which, beginning within a month of Marie Leczinska's decease, ended only
when on his deathbed the dying Monarch prepared to receive absolution by
bidding his inamorata farewell--resolved to flee her profligate
surroundings and devote her life to holiness.

It is affecting to think of the gentle Louise, secretly anticipating the
rigours of convent life, torturing her delicate skin by wearing coarse
serge, and burning tallow candles in her chamber to accustom herself to
their detestable odour.