the extravagances and fits of passion begin; she torments her
husband, her children, her servants, to such a point that they do
not know which way to turn." Her will brooked no opposition.
When forced to leave the Tuileries after the collapse of her
little bubble of political power, she deliberately broke every
article of value in her apartments, consigning mirrors, vases,
statues, porcelains alike to a common ruin, that no one else
might enjoy them after her. This fiery scion of a powerful
family, who had inherited its pride, its ambition, its
uncontrollable passions, and its colossal will, had little
patience with the serene temperament 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,