her; but she may well be placed by the side of her queen for one sublime virtue, too rare in those days,—­chastity.  She was Princess of Sardinia; upon the request of the Duke of Penthievre to Louis XV. to select a wife for his son, the Prince of Lamballe, she was chosen.  A year after the marriage the prince died; and although the marriage had not been a happy one, because of the dissolute life of the prince, his wife forgave him, and “sorrowed for him as though he deserved it.”

When in 1768 the queen died, two parties immediately formed, the object of both of them being to provide Louis XV. with a wife:  one may be called the reform party, striving to keep the old king in the paths of decency; while the other was composed of the typical eighteenth century intriguers, endeavoring to revive the “grand old times.”  The candidate of the former was Mme. de Lamballe, that of the latter, the dissolute Duchesse du Barry.  This state of affairs was made possible by the disagreement of the political and social schemes of the court and ministry.  Soon after, in 1770, the king negotiated the marriage of Marie Antoinette and the dauphin, and from that time began the friendship of the future queen and the Princesse de Lamballe.  Entering the unfamiliar circle of this highly debauched court, the young dauphiness sought a sympathetic friend, and found her in the princess.  No figure in that society was more disinterested and unselfishly devoted.  In all the queen’s undertakings, fetes, and other amusements, she was inseparable from the princess, who was indeed a rare exception to the majority of the women of that time.

The friendship of these two women was uninterrupted, save for a period extending from 1778 to 1785, when Mme. de Polignac and her set of intriguers succeeded in estranging them and usurping all the favors of the queen.  When the outside world was accrediting to Marie Antoinette every popular misfortune, when she lost by death both the dauphin and the Princess Beatrice, when fate was against her, when the future promised nothing but evil, she found no stauncher friend, better consoler, more ardent admirer, than her old companion.  Learning of the removal of the royal family to the Tuileries, she rejoined the queen.  In 1791, with the escape of the royal fugitives, the princess left for England, to seek the protection of the English government for her royal friends.

Mr. Dobson says she was scarcely the discrete et insinuante et touchante Lamballe, with a marvellous sang-froid, hardly the astute diplomatist, that De Lescure makes her.  “She was rather the quiet, imposing Lamballe of old, interested in her friends and what she could do for them, but never shrewd and diplomatic.”  In November she returned to France, to meet her queen and to suffer death for her sake,—­and for this unswerving devotion she has a place in history.  She stands out also as the one normal woman in the crowds of impetuous, shallow, petty, and, in many cases, pitifully debauched women of the time.  Not majestic greatness, but a direct, unaffected sweetness and consistent goodness entitle her to rank among the great women of France.