war between the most celebrated heroes of antiquity; contending kingdoms disputed the honor of placing me on their respective thrones; my story is recorded by the father of verse; and my charms make a figure even in the annals of mankind.  You were, it is true, the wife of Louis XIV., and respected in his court, but you occasioned no wars; you are not spoken of in the history of France, though you furnished materials for the memoirs of a court.  Are the love and admiration that were paid you merely as an amiable woman to be compared with the enthusiasm I inspired, and the boundless empire I obtained over all that was celebrated, great, or powerful in the age I lived in?

Maintenon—­All this, my dear Helen, has a splendid appearance, and sounds well in a heroic poem; but you greatly deceive yourself if you impute it all to your personal merit.  Do you imagine that half the chiefs concerned in the war of Troy were at all influenced by your beauty, or troubled their heads what became of you, provided they came off with honor?  Believe me, love had very little to do in the affair:  Menelaus sought to revenge the affront he had received; Agamemnon was flattered with the supreme command; some came to share the glory, others the plunder; some because they had bad wives at home, some in hopes of getting Trojan mistresses abroad; and Homer thought the story extremely proper for the subject of the best poem in the world.  Thus you became famous; your elopement was made a national quarrel; the animosities of both nations were kindled by frequent battles; and the object was not the restoring of Helen to Menelaus, but the destruction of Troy by the Greeks.—­My triumphs, on the other hand, were all owing to myself, and to the influence of personal merit and charms over the heart of man.  My birth was obscure; my fortunes low; I had past the bloom of youth, and was advancing to that period at which the generality of our sex lose all importance with the other; I had to do with a man of gallantry and intrigue, a monarch who had been long familiarized with beauty, and accustomed to every refinement of pleasure which the most splendid court in Europe could afford:  Love and Beauty seemed to have exhausted all their powers of pleasing for him in vain.  Yet this man I captivated, I fixed; and far from being content, as other beauties had been, with the honor of possessing his heart, I brought him to make me his wife, and gained an honorable title to his tenderest affection.—­The infatuation of Paris reflected little honor upon you.  A thoughtless youth, gay, tender, and impressible, struck with your beauty, in violation of all the most sacred laws of hospitality carries you off, and obstinately refuses to restore you to your husband.  You seduced Paris from his duty, I recovered Louis from vice; you were the mistress of the Trojan prince, I was the companion of the French monarch.

Helen—­I grant you were the wife of Louis, but not the Queen of France.  Your great object was ambition, and in that you met with a partial success;—­my ruling star was love, and I gave up everything for it.  But tell me, did not I show my influence over Menelaus in his taking me again after the destruction of Troy?