It seems an irony of fate that gave as second wife to Monsieur, that prince so weak and so effeminate, a woman who in tastes was far more like a man, and who always regretted she was not born a boy. Madame gayly relates how, in her youth, feeling her vocation as a cavalier very strongly, she was always expecting some miracle of Nature in her favour. With this idea she devoted herself as much as she could to all manly exercises and perilous leaping. She cared much more for swords and guns than for dolls. But above all she proves how little of a woman's nature was in her by the want of delicacy, or, to speak plainly, the lack of modesty in what she says. She is honesty itself, virtue, fidelity, honour; but also, at times, indecency and coarseness personified. She speaks of everything indiscriminately, like a man, is never disgusted by any language, and never goes by four roads when she has to express something which would be difficult and embarrassing to any one but herself. Contrary to the nature of women, she has no desire to please, and no coquetry. Being asked one day why she never glanced into a mirror in passing it, "Because," she replied, "I have too much self-love to like to see how ugly I am." The fine portrait by Rigaud gives us a perfect likeness of her in her old age, portly, fat, a double chin and red cheeks, with dignity of carriage nevertheless, and a proud bearing, but an expression of kindness in the eyes and smile.[1] She herself was pleased at times to record her ugliness; one might even suppose that she valued it. "It is no matter whether one is handsome or not; a fine face changes soon, but a good conscience is always good. You must remember very little of me if you do not rank me among the ugly ones; I have always been so, and I am more so now because of the small-pox. My waist is monstrous in size; I am as square as a cube; my skin is red, mottled with yellow; my hair is getting gray; my nose is honeycombed with the small-pox, and so are my cheeks; I have a large mouth and bad teeth; and there's the portrait of my pretty face." Certainly no one was ever ugly with more spirit and light-heartedness. Occasionally there slips in beneath Madame's pen and her expressions a natural vein of Rabelais and the grotesque. She fills in that way a unique corner in the Court of Louis XIV. Knowing well what was due to her rank and never departing from it, there are many occasions when she is incongruous with it and violates decorum.