Lives of the last four princesses of the royal house of Stuart

1656.] WIDOW COSTUME OF THE TEINCESS. 97
by you.' " This, we may interpolate, might have been a
small bit of diplomacy, bespeaking the favour of her
niece, in case the young King of France should raise
Mary, her eldest daughter, to the throne of France.
The costume of the young widow of Orange, was sin-
gular, and not likely to make a favourable impression
upon the French ladies, who then, as now, and every
other era, were critical and arbitrary, regarding taste in
dress. Very quiet, and truly Dutch, was the costume
the rigour of sumptuary law in Holland, imposed on the
widow of their late Stadtholder.
" Do you observe," said the widow-Queen of England
to her niece Montpensier, " that my daughter is not only
dressed in black, but wears a pommete (a black ball of
wood or metal), because she is a widow, and has never
seen you before,' Certes, her first visit ought to be in
•strict etiquette."
" I replied," continued Mademoiselle Montpensier, " that
I was at a loss to see any necessity of her being ceremonious
with me."
" The Princess of Orange," she adds, " wore the most
beautiful diamond earrings I ever beheld ; very fine pearls,
clasps, and large diamond bracelets, with splendid rings
of the same."
" My daughter of Orange," said Queen Henrietta, " is
not like me ; she is very lofty in her ideas, with her jewels
and her money, she likes splendour. I reasoned with her,
the other day, that economy was most requisite for us all,
declaring that I naturally had the same taste as herself, or
even more, yet she saw how plainly I found it needful
to be."*
* It was this sensible economy that made Pepys, when he viewed
them in England, pronounce the Queen-mother a very plain woman, not
meaning in person, hut attire.
II