Her witty repartees
covered acres of deficiencies with so much grace and tact that men
were tempted to praise her knowledge no less than her beauty.
She had a keen eye for artistic effects. She loved painting,
although her taste was sensuous and voluptuous--character is shown
in the choice of pictures as much as in that of books or of
companions.
There was a painting of Vanloo--a lot of full-blooded horses in a
field of clover; they had broken fence, and were luxuriating in the
rich, forbidden pasture. The triumph of Cleopatra over Antony, by
Le Brun, was a great favorite with Angelique, because of a fancied,
if not a real, resemblance between her own features and those of the
famous Queen of Egypt. Portraits of favorite friends, one of them
Le Gardeur de Repentigny, and a still more recent acquisition, that
of the Intendant Bigot, adorned the walls, and among them was one
distinguished for its contrast to all the rest--the likeness, in the
garb of an Ursuline, of her beautiful Aunt Marie des Meloises, who,
in a fit of caprice some years before, had suddenly forsaken the
world of fashion, and retired to a convent.
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