The remarkable power and influence of these women, the love and adoration accorded them, ceased with their death; the memory of them did not survive overnight.  When, during a terrible storm, the remains of the glorious Mme. de Pompadour were being taken to Paris, the king, seeing the funeral cortege from his window, remarked:  “The Marquise will not have fine weather for her journey.”

Each one of these powerful mistresses represents a complete epoch of society, morals, and customs.  Mme. de Montespan—­that woman whose very look meant fortune or disfavor—­with all her wit and wealth, her magnificence and pomp and superb beauty—­she, in all her splendor, is a type of the triumphant France, haughty, dictatorial, scornful and proud, licentious and decayed at the core.  Voluptuousness and haughtiness were replaced by religiosity and repentance in Mme. de Maintenon, with her temperate character, consistency, and propriety.

The Regency was a period of scandal and wantonness, personified in the Duchess of Berry.  The licentious and extravagant, yet brilliant and exquisite, frivolous but charming, intriguing and diplomatic, was represented by the talented and politically influential Mme. de Pompadour.  Complete degeneracy, vice with all manner of disguise thrown off, adultery of the lowest order, were personified in the common Mme. du Barry, who might be classed with Louise of Savoy of the sixteenth century, while Mme. de Pompadour might be compared with Diana of Poitiers.

In this period the queens of France were of little importance, being too timid and modest to assert their rights—­a disposition which was due sometimes to their restricted youth, spent in Catholic countries, sometimes to a naturally unassuming and sensitive nature.  To this rule Maria Theresa, the wife of Louis XIV., was no exception.  She inherited her sweetness of disposition and her Christian character from her mother, Isabella of France, the daughter of Henry IV. and Marie de’ Medici.  She was pure and candid; a type of irreproachable piety and goodness, of conjugal tenderness and maternal love; and recompensed outraged morality for all the false pride, selfish ambition, depravity, and scandals of court.  She is conspicuous as a model wife, one that loved her husband, her family, and her children.

Around Maria Theresa may be grouped the noble and virtuous women of the court of Louis XIV., for she was to that age what Claude of France was under Francis I., Elizabeth of Austria under Charles V., Louise de Vaudemont under Henry III.  However, in extolling these women, it must be remembered that they had not, as queens, the opportunity to participate in debauchery, licentiousness, and intrigue, as had the mistresses of their husbands; they had no power, were not consulted on state or social affairs, and had granted to them only those favors to the conferring of which the mistresses did not object.