Note 198 — Chapter XI

The Dauphin certainly preserved a tender attachment for the memory of his first wife, the Infanta Maria Therese. She died in child-bed in July, 1746. This did not, however, prevent his appreciating the merit of the second Dauphiness. Observing him in tears just before their marriage, she bade him indulge his grief, for it assured her of what she too might expect from his regard if she had the happiness to deserve it. She was by no means popular in the coteries frequented by Walpole, but by the nation at large she was held in high estimation. Her death was ascribed to a disorder she had contracted in nursing her husband. The Duchesse de Lauragais might have treated the expressions of a person in the agonies of death with more indulgence. Judging from this speech, she must have been as heartless as her lover the Maréchal de Richelieu, than whom, allowing for the difference of sex, she was not much more respectable.—E.