Page:A cyclopaedia of female biography.djvu/533

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
MAR.
511

related by herself. "She had very beautiful hair, and none of her charms were so highly prized by the duke as these tresses. One day, upon his offending her, she cropped them short, and laid then., in an ante-chamber through which he must pass to her room. To her great disappointment, he passed and repassed calmly enough to provoke a saint, without appearing conscious of the deed. When she sought her hair, however, where she had laid it, it had vanished. Nothing more ever transpired upon the subject until the duke's death, when she found her beautiful ringlets carefully laid by in a cabinet where he kept whatever he held most precious. At this part of the story the duchess always fell a crying." The Duchess of Marlborough died in October, 1744, at the age of eighty-four, leaving an enormous fortune.

MARLEY, LOUISE FRANCOISE DE, MARCHIONESS DE VIELBOURG,

Was a French lady of eminence for her extensive learning and great virtues. She lived about 1615.

MARON, THERESA, DE,

A sister of the celebrated Raphael Mengs, was born at Auszig, in Bohemia. From her earliest youth she excelled in enamel, miniature, and crayon paintings; and she retained her talents in full vigour till her death, at the age of eighty, in 1806. She married the Cavalier Maron, an Italian artist of merit.

MARQUETS, ANNE DE,

Was born of noble and rich parents, and was carefully instructed in belle-lettres, and in her religious duties. She became a nun in a convent of the order of St. Dominic, at Poissy, where she devoted the poetic talents for which she was distinguished, to the service of religion. Her poems show great but enlightened zeal. Ronsard, and other celebrated contemporary poets, have spoken very highly of her. She reached an advanced age, but lost her sight some time before her death, which took place in 1558. She bequeathed to Sister Marie de Fortia, a nun in the same convent, three hundred and eighty sonnets of a religious nature.

MARS, MADEMOISELLE HYPPOLITE BOUTET

Was an eminent French actress, who was born in 1778, and made her first appearance in public in 1793: so decided was her success, that she was soon engaged at the Théatre Français.

Her father, Monvel, who was an actor of great celebrity, in giving her instructions, had the good taste and judgment not to make her a mere creature of art. On the contrary, he taught her that much ought to be left to the inspiration of natural feelings, and that art ought only to second, not to supersede nature. Her original cast of parts consisted of those which the French term ingénues—parts in which youthful innocence and simplicity are represented. These she performed for many years with extraordinary applause. At length she resolved to shine in a diametrically opposite kind of acting—that of the higher class of coquettes. In accomplishing this, she had to encounter a violent opposition from