While the guilty mistress beheld with such spite and vexation the departure of her youth, the virtuous wife experienced neither pain nor regret at growing old. It is the privilege of honest women to accept the laws of our common destiny without a murmur, and not to attempt a foolish struggle against nature in the hope of repairing the irreparable ravages of years. The Marquise loaded her face, withered by anxieties, with rouge and powder, and exhausted all the science of a desperate coquetry in the effort to keep up an illusion. Marie Leczinska, on the contrary, did not entertain for a moment the thought of rejuvenating herself. Casanova, who was present at one of her dinners at Fontainebleau, represents her as “without rouge, simply dressed, her head covered with a large cap, old-looking and devout in aspect.” This wholly Christian simplicity was not without its charm. The Queen possessed not merely goodness but wit, and her qualities were reflected on her spiritual countenance without the least pettiness, venerable with no touch of moroseness. While Louis XV. and his mistresses were so sad, so disillusionized, so disenchanted with everything, though surrounded by all their voluptuous pleasures, Marie Leczinska never uttered a complaint. Gaiety was in reality the basis of her character, not that factitious, turbulent, ephemeral gaiety which vice knows for a moment, but that soft, continuous, unaffected, equable gaiety imparted by a serene disposition and a conscience in repose. What an expression of soundness, of moral wellbeing! What patience with life, what sympathetic serenity! The Queen is interested in many things; she is fond of honest amusements. Unlike Louis XV., who is bored by everything, she has a taste for music; she paints a little, she embroiders, she plays the guitar, the hurdy-gurdy, the harpsichord; she willingly takes part in games of chance. President Hénault introduces us into the cabinet, whither she withdraws after having dined alone in public, in accordance with the formalities of etiquette: “Here,” he says, “we are in another climate; this is no longer the Queen, but a private person. Here one finds work of all descriptions, tapestry, arts of every sort, and while she is working she kindly tells us what she has been reading; she mentions the parts that have impressed her and appreciates them.”