ure the support of all
the Muscovite forces in the interest of France. At the same time the
same negotiators proposed to the Duke of Bourbon himself the hand of Mary
Leckzinska, daughter of Stanislaus, the dispossessed King of Poland,
guaranteeing to him, on the death of King Augustus, the crown of that
kingdom.

[Illustration: Mary Leczinska----121]

The proposals of Russia were rejected. "The Princess of Muscovy," M. de
Morville had lately said, "is the daughter of a low-born mother, and has
been brought up amidst a still barbarous people." Every great alliance
appeared impossible; the duke and Madame de Prie were looking out for a
queen who would belong to them, and would secure them the king's heart.
Their choice fell upon Mary Leckzinska, a good, gentle, simple creature,
without wit or beauty, twenty-two years old, and living upon the alms of
France with her parents, exiles and refugees at an old commandery of the
Templars at Weissenburg. Before this King Stanislaus had conceived the
idea of marrying his daughter to Count d'Estrees; the marriage had failed
through the Regent's refusal to make the young lord a duke and peer. The
distress of Stanislaus, his constant begging letters to the court of
France, were warrant for the modest submissiveness of the princess.
"Madame de Prie has engaged a queen, as I might engage a valet
to-morrow," writes Marquis d'Argenson;--it is a pity."

When the first overtures from the duke arrived at Weissenburg, King
Stanislaus entered the room where his wife and daughter were at work,
and, "Fall we on our knees, and thank God!" he said. "My dear father,"
exclaimed the princess, "can you be recalled to the throne of Poland?"
"God has done us a more astounding grace," replied Stanislaus: "you are
Queen of France!"

"Never shall I forget the horror of the calamities we were enduring in
France, when Queen Mary Leckzinska arrived," says M. d'Argenson. "A
continuance of rain had caused famine, and it was much aggravated by the
bad government under the duke. That government, whatever may be said of
it, was even more hurtful through bad judgment than from interested
views, which had not so much to do with it as was said. There were very
costly measures taken to import foreign corn; but that only augmented the
alarm, and, consequently, the dearness.

"Fancy the unparalleled misery of the country-places! It was just the
time when everybody was thinking of harvests and ingatherings