of paying their Court. The archduchesses sit on chairs with backs
without arms. The table is entirely served, and all the dishes set on
by the empress's maids of honour, which are twelve young ladies of the
first quality. They have no salary, but their chambers at court, where
they live in a sort of confinement, not being suffered to go to the
assemblies or public places in town, except in compliment to the
wedding of a sister maid, whom the empress always presents with her
picture set in diamonds. The three first of them are called _Ladies
of the Key_, and wear gold keys by their sides; but what I find most
pleasant, is the custom which obliges them, as long as they live,
after they have left the empress's service, to make her some present
every year on the day of her feast. Her majesty is served by no
married women but the _grande maîtresse_, who is generally a widow of
the first quality, always very old, and is at the same time groom of
the stole, and mother of the maids. The dresses are not at all in the
figure they pretend to in England, being looked upon no otherwise than
as downright chambermaids.

I had audience next day of the empress mother, a princess of great
virtue and goodness, but who piques herself so much on a violent
devotion; she is perpetually performing extraordinary acts of penance,
without having ever done anything to deserve them. She has the same
number of maids of honour, whom she suffers to go in colours; but she
herself never quits her mourning; and sure nothing can be more dismal
than the mourning here, even for a brother. There is not the least bit
of linen to be seen; all black crape instead of it. The neck, ears,
and side of the face covered with a plaited piece of the same stuff,
and the face that peeps out in the midst of it, looks as if it were
pilloried. The widows wear, over and above, a crape forehead cloth;
and in this solemn weed go to all the public places of diversion