Duchesse d’Abrantes.
Her writings are not better known to the world, than her kind and generous mind were to those who had remained faithful during her many and great reverses of fortune. In the zenith of power, when her smile or frown could give value or discredit to those who surrounded her, she was a friend of the needy, a protectress of the weak. Her position often created envy, but her winning manner, her graceful accueil converted many an envious discontented spirit into an admiring friend. In her trials and reverses she was made to feel how few are the friends and followers of prosperity whose feelings do not become chilled by the sight of adversity.
The same kind and conciliatory manner, the same noble enthusiasm, the same powers of conversation, refined and heightened by the literary career she had adopted to ward off the actual and pressing gripe of poverty, were still hers; but their value was differently estimated. The small and modest apartment could boast of but few of the habitués who had formerly swelled to suffocation the crowd that formerly frequented her gilded salons. Some few were to be found, however, surrounding her couch of pain, and never had she taken so much trouble to court and conciliate the richest nobles, the reigning princes of her own and other lands, as she now did to show her cordial welcome, and the heartfelt pleasure she felt in beholding the faithful few, who dreamed not while listening to her brilliant wit, her sparkling reminiscences of bright fêtes in which she had been a principal actress, that the finger of death was already on her, that her moments of life and vivacity freely given for their amusement, were stimulated by the excessive use of opium, while her hours of racking pain and mental anguish were confined to her own bosom.
She died in poverty; she who had given away in charity a hundred times more than would have made her last days comparatively affluent and easy—died in want. Her last days, nay hours, disturbed by pressing, though trifling demands. She died in an Hospital for the destitute.
I am proud to remember that she honoured me with her esteem and friendship.
Philip II. of Spain of Spain.
Philip II.
Philip II. of Spain, said satirically, but truly, that actions in themselves are nothing, it is the result that stamps them with right or wrong.