Page:A Nameless Nobleman.djvu/67

Rh ment and delight of contrast? So Elizabeth was, after all, a more pretentious autocrat than her father. He only aspired to reform and rule the Church: she would have reformed and governed creation.

In another reign Madame de Pompadour held power for twenty years. How? By studying and utilizing the science of contrasts. The chief memorial she has left upon earth is that combination of sky-blue and carnation-pink still known by her name,—that soft and vivid contrast adapted from Nature's azure eyes and softly tinted cheeks; and one can hardly help weeping to-day over the memoirs of the poor wretch as one reads of her piteous efforts to maintain her bad eminence, exerting herself day by day to hold the sated voluptuary, at once her slave and her master, by ever freshly linked chains, largely forged at the anvil of contrast. To-day she moved before him in all the grandeur of jewels, cloth of gold, lace, embroidery, all that composed the grande toilette of that age; to-morrow she was the artless peasant-maid, with her snow-white linen, scarlet bodice, and brief kirtle, showing the pretty feet and ankles in their gay hose and shoon; now she swam in the postures of an Eastern dance, clad in the gold-shot tissues, the transparent veil, and tinkling ornaments, of a bayadère; and again she drooped meekly before her lord in the costume of a nun, coiffed and wimpled, her bold eyes modestly down-dropt, her white unjewelled fingers clasping a rosary.

Ah, poor wretch, indeed! How she must have longed at times to dare to be herself, to be gloomy or