It was the 24th of June, 1768, when Marie Leczinska yielded her last breath. The very day before she had entered her sixty-eighth year. Her reign had lasted forty-three years, and during that long period she had caused no tears to flow but those of joy and gratitude. Her women, her servants, her poor, collected the least scraps of her clothing to preserve as relics. Her mortal remains, exposed for eight days on a bed of state, was the object of a real cult on the part of the people. The Archbishop of Troyes preached her funeral sermon. “Pontiff of the living God,” said he, addressing himself to the Archbishop of Paris, “fear not to offer above her tomb an incense which may one day be offered above her altars.” Compare this life and death with those of the Marquise de Pompadour, if you wish to know what vice is, and what is virtue. Marie Leczinska is the last queen who has ended her days upon the throne of France. The women, who for now a century have worn the royal or imperial crown in our unhappy and inconstant land, have all been the innocent victims of the Revolution and the caprices of fate. One perished an august martyr on the scaffold; another died at the moment of the invasion, her heart broken by the afflictions of her vanquished country. A third faded away almost forgotten in the little duchy given her in exchange for the finest empire of the world. A fourth died holily in a foreign land, regretting perhaps that she had been Queen; and there is one who, at this very moment, is sadly rewarded for her charity and courage, her virtue and her patriotism. To-day, above all, might a Bossuet say before Versailles abandoned or the Tuileries in ruins: _Et nunc, reges intelligite! Erudimini, que judicatis terram!_ And now, O Kings, comprehend! Be instructed, O ye who judge the earth! INDEX _Abrégé chronologique_, Hénault’s, 238, 239. Adelaide, Madame, allowed to remain at Versailles, 246; her apartment, 255. Aix-la-Chapelle, the peace of, 130, 131. _Almases_, performed at Versailles, 140. Austria, France’s alliance with, 203 _et seq._; an Austrian party at Versailles, 205. Artois, Count of, 265. Asturias, Prince of, 19. Bachelier, the confidant of Louis XV., 51. Barbier, quoted, 40, 44, 55; his criticism of Bishop Fitz-James, 80. Barthélemy, Édouard de, 245. Beaujolais, Mademoiselle de, her birth, 19; affianced to Don Carlos, 19; sent back to France, 20; later life and death, 21. Beaumont, Christopher de, summoned to the archbishopric of Paris, 196; his integrity to the Church, 196, 197; exiled, 197; his charge sent from Conflans to Paris, 198, 199; recalled by the King, 197; again exiled, 197. Bellevue, Château of, 145, 146, 151.