Margaret of France, however, who was all soul, had a singular idea in regard to this subject. She was patently shocked at the mere thought that anyone could say he had admired some Italian princess or duchess lying in the most voluptuous simplicity in the midst of a beautiful landscape, set off by drapery that only half covers her. To this fascinating, but as she thought degrading, spectacle she resolved to oppose another—the spectacle of the soul. The project occurred to her, it is true, at an age when all her charms but those of the soul were dead; she had herself painted, therefore, like the others, before a landscape on which the sun is rising (or setting), and in front of a curtain; but instead of lying at length, she stands erect. She is clothed in her shift, transparent enough indeed, but carefully fastened about the neck, and, to give greater point to the interpretation, she is admiring herself in a little hand-glass, in allusion no doubt to her book _The Mirror of the Soul_. She wears neither necklace nor jewels; a few ordinary trinkets negligently placed on her toilet-table alone indicate her quality. Her whole body in its tender austerity is a revelation of her soul. And the moral effect of this representation appeared so lofty that this little portrait was treasured in the princess’s family as her true likeness, the portrait at once authentic and piously esoteric.[183] Margaret thus drew from art its ethical teaching, and gave a lesson to ladies who rely too much on mere beauty of form. Such is, we believe, the key to the enigma. To win their triumph platonist women do not fling away their weapons, as someone has wittily said; they lay them by.