The third was the daughter of Henry II., the "Grosse Margot" of her
brother, Henry III., the "Reine Margot" of Dumas' novel, the idol of
Brantome, the first wife of Henry IV., the beloved of Guise, La Mole,
and a long succession of gallants, the rival of her sister-in-law
Mary Stuart, not in misfortunes, but as the most beautiful, gracious,
learned, accomplished, and amiable of the ladies of her time. This
Margaret would have been an almost perfect heroine of romance (for she
had every good quality except chastity), if she had not unluckily lived
rather too long.
Her great-aunt, our present subject, was not the equal of her
great-niece in beauty, her portraits being rendered uncomely by a
portentously long nose, longer even than Mrs. Siddons's, and by a very
curious expression of the eyes, going near to slyness. But the face is
one which can be imagined as much more beautiful than it seems in the
not very attractive portraiture of the time, and her actual attractions
are attested by her contemporaries with something more than the
homage-to-order which literary men have never failed to pay to ladies
who are patronesses of letters.
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