her feelings by the magnitude of her share of the booty. There was no hypocrisy in the tears of the empress. Her intellectual honesty was as perfect as Frederick's own, and she was as incapable as he was of endeavouring to blind herself to the quality of her own acts. No ruler was ever more loyal to a conception of duty. Maria Theresa considered herself first and foremost as the heiress of the rights of the house of Austria. Therefore, when her inheritance was assailed at the beginning of her reign, she fought for it with every weapon an honest woman could employ, and for years she cherished the hope of recovering the lost province of Silesia, conquered by Frederick. Her practical sense showed her the necessity of submitting to spoliation when she was overpowered. She accepted the peace of Berlin in 1742 in order to have a free hand against her Bavarian enemy, the emperor Charles VII. (q.v.). When Frederick renewed the war she accepted the struggle cheerfully, because she hoped to recover her own. Down to the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 she went on fighting for Silesia or its equivalent. In the years following the peace she applied herself to finding allies in France and Russia who would help her to recover Silesia. Here, as later in the case of Poland, she subordinated her feelings to her duty to the state. Though she denied that she had ever written directly to Madame de Pompadour, it is certain that she allowed her ministers to make use of the favourite's influence over the French king. When fate decided against her in the Seven Years' War she bowed to the inevitable, and was thenceforward a resolute advocate of peace.