_Maintenon_--I should wish first to be convinced of the fact, before I
offer to give you a reason for it.

_Helen_--That will be very easy; for there is no occasion to go any
further than our own histories and experience to prove what I advance.
You were beautiful, accomplished, and fortunate; endowed with every
talent and every grace to bend the heart of man and mold it to your
wish; and your schemes were successful; for you raised yourself from
obscurity and dependence to be the wife of a great monarch.--But what is
this to the influence my beauty had over sovereigns and nations! I
occasioned a long ten-years' war between the most celebrated heroes of
antiquity; contending kingdoms disputed the honor of placing me on their
respective thrones; my story is recorded by the father of verse; and my
charms make a figure even in the annals of mankind. You were, it is
true, the wife of Louis XIV., and respected in his court, but you
occasioned no wars; you are not spoken of in the history of France,
though you furnished materials for the memoirs of a court. Are the love
and admiration that were paid you merely as an amiable woman to be
compared with the enthusiasm I inspired, and the boundless empire I
obtained over all that was celebrated, great, or powerful in the age
I lived in?

_Maintenon_--All this, my dear Helen, has a splendid appearance, and
sounds well in a heroic poem; but you greatly deceive yourself if you
impute it all to your personal merit. Do you imagine that half the
chiefs concerned in the war of Troy were at all influenced by your
beauty, or troubled their heads what became of you, provided they came
off with honor? Believe me, love had very little to do in the affair:
Menelaus sought to revenge the affront he had received; Agamemnon was
flattered with the supreme command; some came to share the glory, others