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asked him,' says our authoress, how he knew that. "I know all that you do," said he; "I follow you every where, and disguised in a thousand shapes. How often did you not see me without knowing me! Yesterday, at twelve, you were in the Luxembourg gardens in a blue gown; this morning, in returning from the bath, you went to mass at the Carmes. I was behind you for a quarter of an hour; then I waited for you at the door of the church, where, as you went out, you gave me alms." This information astonished me, and I asked him how much I had given him. "Two sols," answered he; "I shall have them set in gold, and wear them all my life next to my heart." These disguises excited my curiosity, and amused me, (the lover certainly attacked her on her weak side,) and as he gave me an exact account of all I did, I could not doubt his veracity. Every Sunday he wrote me volumes containing all that I had done during the week, so accurately, that I could not but be convinced that he had never quitted my most private footsteps; yet I never gave him the least encouragement or ground for hope. One evening, as I was tuning my harp, he approached me, and, opening his waistcoat, showed me the two sols set in gold, and suspended to a string platted of dark hair. I smiled, and asked him whose hair that was. To whose hair could I attach those sols but to yours?" "To mine!" "Yes! I cut this string myself from your own head, one day as I was dressing your hair." At this I burst out laughing. "It is true," continued he; "Madame Dufour, your coiffeuse, (for in those good days men hairdressers were thought indecent,) often sends you a female apprentice in her room. I bribed one of these to let me take her place, and, dressed as a woman, aided by the talent which I possess in a supreme degree for disguising myself—a talent which I owe to you-about three weeks since I cut off this hair from your head." In the midst of my astonishment I recollected, in fact, that one of Madame Dufour's girls had been very silent, and had often excited my laughter by her sighs; and though my memory could trace no resemblance between her countenance and that of the Viscount, I was convinced that he was the person, and conceived the highest opinion of his powers of mimickry. This belief was confirmed when he assured me that he had spent six weeks in studying the art of hairdressing, in order to cut that lock from my head with his own hands. Nevertheless, I could not help discovering in his recital an infinite number of falsehoods; and, notwithstanding my predilection for the marvellous, his audacity frightened me. Every instant I apprehended some disaster; every strange face I saw I thought was his; and these perpetual alarms made me take a decided aversion for the hero of this wild romance, which, during the first three or four months had amused me. I returned him, unopened, the next letter which he sent me; and this, indeed, I ought to have done after knowing the contents of the first. When next I met him, he darted his angry eyes at me, threatening me with every kind of extravagance if I continued not to read his letters. Fear made me comply. (What a state of society, where a woman can find no security against the importunities of a libertine, but is compelled to listen to him because she knows that public opinion would call her aversion prudery, and where prudery

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is a more serious reproach than gallantry!) A visit to L'Ile-Adam, where he was not invited, interrupted this epistolary intimacy, but upon my return to Paris the suppers began again. At one of these, the conversation turned upon some young men of the court, who had gone to Corsica, to serve in the wars there, as simple volunteers. Many persons blamed them, but I undertook their defence upon the principles of chivalry. When the Viscount de C—was handing me to my carriage, he said, "Madam, have you any commands for Corsica?" "How," said I, laughing, are you going to Corsica?" "Do you not approve of those who do?" "But this is not in earnest.' Perfectly so. At five in the morning, that is to say in four hours, I depart." The next morning a note from his sister-in-law came to chide me for having thus determined him to set off for Corsica so suddenly. This adventure was much talked of in the world, and I must confess that it flattered my vanity; while the sentimental ladies were quite shocked at the little sensibility which I showed for a lover worthy of the best days of chivalry. One of my friends in particular assured me that he was the most virtuous man upon earth; confessed that she herself had once most passionately loved him, and that, in a moment of "égarement," she had told him so; that he threw himself at her feet, implored her pity and her friendship, declared that his heart was mine, and that he loved me most tenderly, though unrequited. My friend was in raptures at the frankness of this conduct, and I myself found it estimable; though I could not help admitting the evil thought, that the Viscount, knowing the candour and vivacity of my friend, acted thus merely in the hope that she might inform me of it. M. de C remained a year in Corsica, where his valour was most conspicuous. On his return he spoke no more of his love for me; but hearing me once express some anxiety about a friend who was ill at Brussels, he entered my room the next day but one, booted and spurred, with a whip in one hand, and in the other a letter. "Here," said he, " is a letter from your friend. She has, indeed, been ill, but is now recovered; I saw her on her couch.”. "What! have you been to Brussels!" 66 Certainly. You were uneasy, and that was sufficient motive." I was moved even to tears at this act of kindness, and the Viscount thought he had at last found the way to my heart. days afterwards, being alone with me, he threw himself on his knees, repeated his protestations, and swore that if I did not requite him he would kill himself. His impetuosity filled me with terror and indignation. I rang the bell, and ordered my servant to show him down stairs. The next morning I received a note from him, (what still another note!) dated "23d August, the last day of my life." I wrote to the Count de C, his brother, who immediately came to me, and on whose face I read confirmed the sad news. He told me that the Viscount had disappeared that morning at four o'clock, leaving a few lines to say that none should ever hear of him again. "It is you who have driven him to this act of despair," repeated the Count at every moment. My anxiety and my grief were extreme, and we agreed to keep this story as secret as we could.

A few

Four months passed thus, when I received a letter from the Count

de

de C "Let us no more deplore the fate of the unfortunate lover; he is come to life again." He then told me that the Viscount had gone into the forest of Senard, to execute his purpose of suicide; that at the very moment when his arm was raised to strike, a hermit stood before him and dragged him to his hermitage. There, restored to reason and religion, he lived three months in the midst of a society of brothers, unknown to them, edifying them by his conversation, and passing among them for a saint. He left this retreat occasionally, indeed, to go disguised as an Armenian to the Palais Royal, in order to watch me, and to observe the impression which the rumour of his death would make upon me. Finding me, however, neither changed nor emaciated, he confessed to his brother that my insensibility had cured him; and one of my friends called me a monster of obduracy.'

Now we think that, all circumstances considered, it would be difficult to find a companion to this tale out of France. That this state of morality should be so general as to excite no special disgust, that public opinion should but smile at it, denotes a truly fearful and established reign of depravity. What should we think of a person whose friends, like those of our authoress, universally found nothing reproachable in her conduct but her hardheartedness? What should we think of her wonderful esteem for the married lady who made a declaration of her passion to this Vicomte? What of the reproaches of this Count? And what men must they have been who gloried in the duplicity, the folly and the talent lavished on such a pursuit?

Neither is this all. We hope our tale is not too long, for we must continue it. Mere indiscriminate unimpassioned seduction was not the boundary of our hero's depravity. One day the elder brother, the Count de C—, entered the apartment of Madame de Genlis.

of

""Ah," cried he, "I am going to relate to you the horror of horrors!" "Of whom?" "Of the most accomplished villain in existence, my brother." He then proceeded to state that Madame de C-his wife, lately dead, had left a box which he knew to contain letters. "I had long," said he, "deferred opening it, but this morning I resolved to examine it. I found epistles from many persons, but the thickness of the bottom convinced me that I had not seen all. At length I found a secret spring, and the false bottom flew out. Under it I detected an immense number of notes and letters from my brother to my wife, declaring in the most passionate language his love for her, which he protested was perfectly pure, but which nevertheless employed every means of seduction. These letters prove that my wife always treated his protestations with severity, though he frequently threatened to commit some desperate act, after divulging all to me. He often speaks of you, and says that his passion for you was all a feint to conceal his real sentiments."

Madame de Genlis then quotes two passages from the Vicomte's letters to his brother's wife.

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At least,' he writes, this feint does not disturb her tranquillity. Provided she (i. e. Mad. Genlis) can but amuse herself, provided she is praised and flattered, that is all she wants. Her vanity and her vivacity will always stand in the place of reason to her, and she never will know what a strong attachment is. (Our roué had no slight knowledge of the person with whom he had to deal. And again :) So much the better that the world should think that it is upon her account that I am going to Corsica. But how can you, who, with so much nobleness and sensibility, are only alarmed, not moved, by my resolution, fear the dangerous impression which it may make upon her? Trust more to her vanity, and be sure that as long as she thinks herself the cause of my departure, she will find it quite natural.'

These phrases, indeed, help Madame de Genlis to discover that the Vicomte was a Lovelace, much more perfidious and artful than the hero of Richardson.

'What (she exclaims) would have been my misery had I loved him, had my instinct not warned me of his duplicity!

But what did the outraged brother and husband, the Count de C-, feel in this conjuncture? He lives with his brother on the same terms as usual. At first, indeed, the effort pained him, but in six months he forgot the injury of which he at first pretended ignorance. On this occasion Madame de Genlis bestows the epithet virtuous upon the Count de C—, True-forgiveness of injury is a virtue; but what shall we say of the indifference which, in six months, can forget such depravity as this? Madame de C, too, our authoress holds up to the world as a model of virtue; and the delicacy of dividing the gilt spoon we have already noticed. But a woman who can receive, keep and hoard up in a secret treasure, love-letters from her husband's brother, to the day of her death, would certainly not be held as very virtuous in most countries with which we have any acquaint

ance.

Of all the serious concerns of life, says Beaumarchais, the most farcical is matrimony; and such seems to have been the universal creed of his countrymen. It is, indeed, difficult to suppose that rational beings ever did or could treat with such levity a thing upon which so much of human happiness depends. But it isor at least it was-in the moral constitution of that nation to consider serious things with frivolity, and trifles with importance. Of all that can be turned into ridicule, of all that can raise a smile in private or in public, in the closet or upon the stage, the most fertile source of laughter is an injured husband; and the thing which, religion not excepted, creates the greatest mirth, is the rupture of the marriage vow.

Under the old monarchical regimen, the only value that was set upon female virtue was in its sacrifice, and matrimony was

little more than a sacramental license to become unchaste. Before marriage, no communication was allowed between men and women; and the daughters of France were hardly permitted to hear the sound of a male voice. Their usual place of education was a convent, whence they were occasionally taken out by their mothers, whose apron string-to use a vulgar phrase-they never quitted, unless now and then at a ball, during the hurried movements of a country dance. This was the only diversion they were allowed to share; and such were the limits of their intercourse with the sex with whom they divided the world. They had no opportunity of knowing what mankind was; none of forming their hearts and minds in the likeness of the being with whom they were to pass their lives, or of searching out one congenial to their own. No gradual developement, no imperceptible transition led them from infancy to womanhood, and prepared them to fulfil the condition of wife and mother. The state of matron, the blessed state of consort and parent, they never knew; for between education and dissipation, whatever passions might be awakened, the affections slumbered. In the greatest concern of their lives, they were bereft of choice, even of a preference, and others selected for them. In high life, the parents looked around them among their acquaintances of similar birth, rank, and fortune, for a male child whose age might suit that of their daughter, and at a very early period, sometimes long before the children were marriageable, an union was agreed upon between the families, upon the same principle as Arabian breeders couple their horses, upon richness of blood. A day or two before the ceremony was performed-generally indeed not more than twenty-four hours sooner, and long after the gowns and jewelsor, to use the technical terms for these important pieces of French paraphernalia, the trousseau and the corbeil-were purchased, the parties were led out of their respective nurseries, to meet for the first time; to show and see each other's shapes and motions. If these were mutually pleasing, the omen was propitious; if not, the marriage did not the less take place. The nuptial service oyer, it sometimes happened that the new married couple were permitted to reside together; though not unfrequently the bride was conducted back from the foot of the altar to her former abode, and the bridegroom sent to travel or otherwise improve himself until his papa and mamma judged him fit to undertake the care of his wife;-and then began the honeymoon. From that instant a new era opened in the life of the female. Her former mien and manners were sunk in the new part which she had to play. Her retreating look became advancing; her timidity was changed to confidence, and she immediately assumed

a per

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