ment and dilettante tastes of
her amiable husband, and it is said she did not scruple to make him
feel the force of her small hands. "You will waken some morning to find
yourself in the Academie Francaise, and the Duc d'Orleans regent," she
said to him one day when he showed her a song he had translated. Her
device was a bee, with this motto: "I am small, but I make deep wounds."
Doubtless its fitness was fully realized by those who belonged to the
Ordre de la Mouche-a-miel which she had instituted, and whose members
were obliged to swear, by Mount Hymettus, fidelity and obedience
to their perpetual dictator. But what pains and chagrins were not
compensated by the bit of lemon-colored ribbon and its small meed of
distinction!

The little princess worked valiantly for political power, but she worked
in vain. The conspiracy against the regent, which seemed to threaten
another Fronde, came to nothing, and this ardent instrigante, who had
the disposition to "set the four corners of the kingdom on fire" to
attain her ends, found her party dispersed and herself in prison. But
this was only an episode, and though it gave a death blow to her dreams
of power, it did not quench her irrepressible ardor. If she could not
rule in one way, she would in another. As soon as she regained her
freedom, her little court was again her kingdom, and no sovereign ever
reigned more imperiously. "I am fond of company," she said, "for I
listen to no one, and every one listens to me." It was an incessant
thirst for power, a perpetual need of the sweet incense of flattery,
that was at the bottom of this "passion for a multitude." "She believed
in herself," writes Mlle. de Launay, afterward Baronne de Staal, "as
she believed in God or Descartes, without examination and without
discussion."

This lady's maid, who loved mathematics and anatomy, was familiar with
Malebranche and Descartes, and left some literary reputation as a writer
of gossipy memoirs, was a prominent figure in the lively court at Sceaux
for more than forty years, and has given us some vivid pictures of her
capricious mistress. A young girl of clear intellect and good education,
but without rank, friends, or fortune, she was forced to accept the
humiliating position of femme de chambre with the Duchesse du Maine, who
had been attracted by her talents. She was brought into notice through
a letter to Fontenelle, which was thought witty enough to be copied and
circulated. If she had t