As greatly as Madame de Pompadour was hated and despised, so greatly was Marie Leczinska loved and respected. Her arrival was a festival, her departure caused general sadness. “Is it not admirable,” she wrote, “that I cannot leave Compiègne without seeing everybody crying? Sometimes I ask myself what I have done to all these people whom I do not know, to be so loved by them. They remember all my wishes.” She gave away all she had, according to her lady of honor, the Maréchale de Mouchy, and when nothing was left, she sold her jewels. One year when the high price of bread had caused more than common distress, she pawned her precious stones and wore false ones. Her charity was as inexhaustible as her kindness. She had the virtues of a woman of the middle classes, the manners of a great lady, the dignity of a queen. The resignation with which she endured her sorrows inspired in every one a sympathy blended with respectful compassion. Public opinion paid her homage, envy and slander were silent in her presence. Even the philosophers honored her. In a changing epoch, when all minds and hearts were in disorder, she preserved three qualities which are rare in courts,--honesty, tact, and good sense. There was nothing gloomy or morose about her virtue. Her sweet, agreeable devotion recalled that of Saint Francis de Sales, the most lovable of all the saints. She had the gift of making herself beloved by a word, a smile. As has been remarked by the Countess d’Armaillé, there was hardly a salon in France toward the close of the last century, in which one could not meet some old lady always ready to tell about her presentation at Versailles, and to become affected in reciting the compliments which the good Queen Marie had paid her on that memorable evening. Affable by nature and principle, indulgent by instinct and reasoned conviction, Marie Leczinska was distinguished among all the women of the court by a quality which is a force and a charm, a quality still more necessary to sovereigns than to private persons,--benevolence. When she fell ill, the emotion was general. Every Frenchman entertained for her the sentiments of a brother or a sister. The people besieged the doors of the château of Versailles to get tidings of her. Sometimes Louis XV. gave these himself. The churches of Paris and the provinces were crowded with people praying for the good Queen. The final moment was drawing near. The four daughters of Marie Leczinska spent the last nights at their mother’s bedside with a devotion which made them resemble Sisters of Charity. At the moment when the death struggle was about to begin, Louis XV. kneeled beside his wife’s bed, and said to her, weeping: “Here are our daughters whom I present to you.” A Christian, the mother understood what these words implied; and raising her eyes to heaven, she gave her children her last blessing.