of one of his mistresses; Montespan fostered a brood of satirists,
and Maintenon one of devotees, while that extraordinary religious
controversy which initiated the sect of the Quietists had its origin in
the example and agency of Madame Guyon. Even now, although, as a late
writer has quaintly observed, "no lady brings her distaff to the
council-chamber," the influence of the sex on political opinion, in
its operation as a social principle, is recognized. A friend of mine,
returning from a dinner-party, described the free and witty sarcasm with
which a fair Legitimist assailed the Imperial rule; a week afterwards,
meeting her at the same table, she related, that, a few days after her
imprudent conversation, she received a courteous invitation from the
chief of police. "When they were seated alone in his bureau,--Madame,"
said he, "you have position, conversational talent, and wield the pen
effectively; are you disposed to exert this influence, henceforth, in
behalf of, instead of against the government?" Before her indignant
negative was fairly uttered, he opened a drawer that seemed full of
Napoleons, and glanced at them and her significantly. Thus Montesquieu's
observation continues true:--"The individual who would attempt to judge
of the government by the men at the head of affairs, and not by the
women who sway those men, would fall into the same error as he who
judges of a machine by its outward-action, and not by its secret
springs"; and the old base system of espionage is revived under the new
despotism.

It has become proverbial in France, that the life of woman has three
eras,--in youth a coquette, in middle-life a wit, and in age a
_devote_,--which is but another mode of expressing that economy of
personal gifts, that shrewd use of the most available social power,
which distinguishes the Gallic from the Saxon woman, the worldly from
the domestic instincts. There only can we imagine a royal favorite