presence of a reader would have disconcerted her very much. There were,
however, occasions on which the Princess, generally so intractable, became
all at once affable and condescending, and manifested the most
communicative good-nature; this would happen during a storm; so great was
her alarm on such an occasion that she then approached the most humble,
and would ask them a thousand obliging questions; a flash of lightning
made her squeeze their hands; a peal of thunder would drive her to embrace
them, but with the return of the calm, the Princess resumed her stiffness,
her reserve, and her repellent air, and passed all by without taking the
slightest notice of any one, until a fresh storm restored to her at once
her dread and her affability. [Which reminds one of the elder (and
puritanic) Cato who said that he "embraced" his wife only when it
thundered, but added that he did enjoy a good thunderstorm. D.W.]

Mesdames found in a beloved brother, whose rare attainments are known to
all Frenchmen, a guide in everything wanting to their education. In their
august mother, Maria Leczinska, they possessed the noblest example of
every pious and social virtue; that Princess, by her eminent qualities and
her modest dignity, veiled the failings of the King, and while she lived
she preserved in the Court of Louis XV. that decorous and dignified tone
which alone secures the respect due to power. The Princesses, her
daughters, were worthy of her; and if a few degraded beings did aim the
shafts of calumny at them, these shafts dropped harmless, warded off by
the elevation of their sentiments and the purity of their conduct.

If Mesdames had not tasked themselves with numerous occupations, they
would have been much to be pitied. They loved walking, but could enjoy
nothing beyond the public gardens of Versailles; they would have
cultivated flowers, but could have no others than those in their windows.