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Show LIMBERGER MAGAZINES. FH Not satisfied with its "Famous Affinities" se- l' ries something in the Camembert line of maga- H'l zine literature quite unequaled up to date the fl last issue of Pearson's regales its readers with I M an article on "Women Who Have Upset Thrones." P M II takes Gaby Deslys as its text, following out the fl absurd idea that that womnn with the clever press 11 agent had anything in particular to do with the f overthrow of the Portugese monarchy, and in the J M course of its maunderings attempts to besmirch 1 M such a woman as Madame do Maintenon. M Madame de Maintenon was not a bad woman. M The widow of the crippled poet, Scarron. she re- plsted the importunities of Louis XIV to become M his mistress, and that, too, in an age when the M distinction was regarded, even by the women of M the court, as one not altogether infamous. Event- M ually he married her, and she certainly did much M to regulate the morals of that profligate monarch. M The revocation of the Edict of Nantes has been M attributed to her influence, but there is good evl- H dence to contradict this charge. H It is difficult, too, to see what Henriette d'Or- H leans had to do with the upsetting of any - H thrones. In fact, in the list of eight which the H writer gives in his article as a sort of grand wind- . H up, there are not more than two that contributed H directly to the upsetting of a throne. Even those H two might be eliminated without any strain on the H conscience of the historian. There would have H been a French revolution had there been no Marie jH Antoinette, and the overthrow of Napoleon III was H written by the stars long ere one of them smiled jjH on the birth-night of Eugenie de Montijo. The H monarch who is too weak to hold his throne be- 1H cause of a woman would be too weak to hold it H without her. H Here is one of the objections to the popular H magazine. Its history like many things that ap- H peal to the "popular" taste is untrustworthy and - M unscrupulous. The farther we get from the day of M action, the more blurred ana accurate become H the outlines. Hence, we have strumpets like H Jeanne du Barry, and Francoise de Montespan jH mentioned in the same bre.ilQ with women like H Madam de Maintenon, Henriette d'Orleans, and Marie Antoinette, the last of whom H may have been imprudent, but whom history, rH however malignant, has never declared to be 1m- moral, and whose great misfortunes ought to bo H some protection against the calamities of the ' hacks who butcher the facts of history to make 'H sensational reading for the low-brows that And ' their Intellectual pabulum between the covers of jH some magazines. l |
