Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/645

Rh to awaken dislike, and when she speaks of her sufferings in the following manner we must pity and be grieved for her.

"The great vexations and chagrins I have suffered would have been sufficient to have killed almost any other than myself; but God has been infinitely merciful and good, to give me sufficient strength, to enable me to sustain the miseries which it has been his will to allot me: nothing discourages, dejects or fatigues me. I am not devout, but sincerely wish I could be so. Though I feel the utmost indifference for the world, I fear I do not sufficiently despise it to detach myself altogether from it; since I do not enter myself into the number of those who shew their contempt by quitting it."

Besides her Memoirs, in 8 vols. She left a collection of Portraits, of the king, queen, and other persons of the court; two romances, entitled La Relation de l'Isle Imaginaire, and La Princesse de Paphlagonie. They are full of taste and delicate criticism. Cyrus, in the latter, is M. the prince, who died 1686; and the queen of the Amazons, Mlle. de Montpensier. She wrote also two books of devotion.

father taught polite literature in several cities of Italy; and the report of his great merit advanced him to be preceptor to the young princes of Ferrara, sons of Alphonso I. Having discovered an uncommon capacity and inclination to learning in his daughter, he was induced to cultivate it; and she soon made such