The prison-child had now reached the loftiest pinnacle in the land of her birth. Though she wore no crown, she was Queen of France, wielding a power which few throned ladies have ever known. Princes and Princesses rose to greet her entry with bows and curtsies; the mother of the coming King called her "aunt"; her rooms, splendid as the King's, adjoined his; she had the place of honour in the King's Council Room; the State's secrets were in her keeping; she guided and controlled the destinies of the nation. And all this greatness came to her when she had passed her fiftieth year, and when all the grace and bloom of youth were but a distant memory. The King himself, two years her junior, and still in the prime of his manhood, was her shadow, paying to the plain, middle-aged woman such deference and courtesy as he had never shown to the youth and beauty of her predecessors in his affection. And she--thus translated to dizzy heights--kept a head as cool and a demeanour as modest as when she was "Scarron's widow," the convent protégée. For power and splendour she cared no whit. Her ambition now, as always, was to be loved for herself, to "play a beautiful part in the world," and to deserve the respect of all good men. Her chief pleasure was found away from the pomp and glitter of the Court, among "her children" of the Saint Cyr Convent, which she had founded for the education of the daughters of poor noblemen, over whom she watched with loving and unflagging care. And yet she was not happy--not nearly as happy as in the days of her obscure widowhood. "I am dying of sorrow in the midst of luxury," she wrote. And again. "I cannot bear it. I wish I were dead." Why she was so unhappy, with her Queendom and her environment of love and esteem, and her life of good works, it is impossible to say. The fact remains, inscrutable, but still fact. Twenty-five years of such life of splendid sadness, and Louis, his last days clouded by loss and suffering, died with her prayers in his ears, his coverlet moistened by her tears. Two years later--years spent in prayers and masses and charitable work--the "Queen Dowager" drew the last breath of her long life at St Cyr, shortly after hearing that her beloved Due de Maine, her pet nursling of other days, had been arrested and flung into prison. CHAPTER XXIII A THRONED BARBARIAN