and arms were also left by the Queen to his execution; she reserved to
herself nothing but the draperies, and the least important accessories.
The Queen every morning filled up the outline marked out for her, with a
little red, blue, or green colour, which the master prepared on the
palette, and even filled her brush with, constantly repeating, 'Higher up,
Madame--lower down, Madame--a little to the right--more to the left.'
After an hour's work, the time for hearing mass, or some other family or
pious duty, would interrupt her Majesty; and the painter, putting the
shadows into the draperies she had painted, softening off the colour where
she had laid too much, etc., finished the small figures. When the work
was completed the private drawing-room was decorated with her Majesty's
work; and the firm persuasion of this good Queen that she had painted it
herself was so entire that she left this cabinet, with all its furniture
and paintings, to the Comtesse de Noailles, her lady of honour. She added
to the bequest: 'The pictures in my cabinet being my own work, I hope the
Comtesse de Noailles will preserve them for my sake.' Madame de Noailles,
afterwards Marechale de Mouchy, had a new pavilion constructed in her
hotel in the Faubourg St. Germain, in order to form a suitable receptacle
for the Queen's legacy; and had the following inscription placed over the
door, in letters of gold: 'The innocent falsehood of a good princess.'

"Maria Leczinska could never look with cordiality on the Princess of
Saxony, who married the Dauphin; but the attentive behaviour of the
Dauphiness at length made her Majesty forget that the Princess was the
daughter of a king who wore her father's crown. Nevertheless, although
the Queen now saw in the Princess of Saxony only a wife beloved by her
son, she never could forget that Augustus wore the crown of Stanislaus.
One day an officer of her chamber having undertaken to ask a private
audience of her for the Saxon minister, and the Queen being unwilling to
grant it, he ventured to add that he should not have presumed to ask this