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"Comte de Tesse, father of the last Count of that name, who left no children, was first equerry to Queen Maria Leczinska. She esteemed his virtues, but often diverted herself at the expense of his simplicity.
It is sufficiently meritorious in them to engage in such pursuits, even with indifferent success, because this taste and the protection it extends produce abundance of talent on every side. Maria Leczinska delighted in the art of painting, and imagined she herself could draw and paint. She had a drawing-master, who passed all his time in her cabinet.
This sentiment induced her to insist on the observation of all the forms of respect due to royal birth; whereas in other princes the consciousness of that birth often induces them to disdain the ceremonies of etiquette, and to prefer habits of ease and simplicity. There was a striking contrast in this respect between Maria Leczinska and Marie Antoinette, as has been justly and generally observed.
In their august mother, Maria Leczinska, they possessed the noblest example of every pious and social virtue; that Princess, by her eminent qualities and her modest dignity, veiled the failings of the King, and while she lived she preserved in the Court of Louis XV. that decorous and dignified tone which alone secures the respect due to power.
The Duchess of Gloucester, sweet pretty Princess Mary of more than fifty years before, came in the character of a much less happy woman, Marie Leczinska, the queen of Louis XV. She must have looked charming in her rich black brocade, and some of the hoards of superb lace which she is said to have inherited from her mother, Queen Charlotte edged with strings of diamonds and agraffes of diamonds, while over her powdered hair was tied a fichu capuchin of Chantilly.
Even the most minute details of Marie Antoinette's tragic career are fresh in our memories, but which of us can remember the part in the history of France played by Marie Leczinska? Yet, apart from her claim to notability as having been the last queen who ended her days on the French throne, her story is full of romantic interest.
This abominable Pacte de Famine created two artificial famines in France; its authors battened on the misery of the people, and for any who lifted their voices against it the Bastille yawned. In 1768 the poor abused and neglected queen, Marie Leczinska died. The court sank from bad to worse: void now of all dignity, all gaiety, all wit and all elegance, it drifted to its doom.
He sought to recommend a creature of his own as her confessor; to obtain for his own daughter the appointment of one of her chief ladies; and, with a wickedness peculiar to the French court, he even endeavored to imitate the vile arts by which the Duc de Richelieu had deprived Marie Leczinska of the affections of the king, to alienate the dauphin from his young wife, and to induce him to commit himself to the guidance of Madame du Barri.
"Maria Leczinska could never look with cordiality on the Princess of Saxony, who married the Dauphin; but the attentive behaviour of the Dauphiness at length made her Majesty forget that the Princess was the daughter of a king who wore her father's crown.
Thrusting aside the flimsy veil of Time, we find Marie Leczinska the penniless daughter of an exiled Polish king who is living in retirement in a dilapidated commandatory at a little town in Alsace. It is easy to picture the shabby room wherein the unforeseeing Marie sits content between her mother and grandmother, all three diligently broidering altar cloths.
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