e
could assist her. The servant slams the door--the lady awakes--a scene
of mutual confusion ensues, which tries to the utmost M. Colmache's
powers of description, but which ends in M. de Talleyrand giving to the
lovely applicant the document she required, and in the commencement of a
_liaison_ which ultimately terminated in matrimony. It was, of course, a
trick or practical joke, which had been played off by certain wags, male
and female, at Madame Hamelin's assembly on the unsuspecting and
guileless Madame Grand, according to M. Colmache; but to any one else it
will seem plain enough that it was no more than the step of a daring and
clever _intriguante_, who knew perfectly well what she was about, and
who had resolved to conquer where Madame Tallien and Madame Beauharnais
had failed--and she did conquer.

Who, then, was this bold lady who contrived so cunningly to ensnare in
her toils the wariest man in France? "I have heard," says M. Colmache,
"that she was of English origin. This is not true. Her maiden name was
Dayot, and she was born at L'Orient; but her connection with India,
where a great part of her family resided, and the peculiar character of
her beauty, would seem to have been the ground-work of the supposition."
(P. 298). We can not clear up this riddle altogether, but we can do
something toward its partial solution.

Her family name we are unacquainted with, but she was a native of
Scotland, and her _first_ husband was a British officer, though we are
likewise ignorant of his name. Her marriage most likely took place in
India, and at an early age: for after her husband's death she became the
wife of a M. Grand, a French gentleman, who obtained a divorce from her
in India in consequence of an improper intimacy with Mr., afterward the
celebrated Sir Philip Francis. How long she lived with Mr. Francis we
know not, but she subsequently passed under the protection of a Mr.
William Macintosh, a British merchant, with whom she returned to Europe
in 1781. Mr. Macintosh's private affairs calling him to France, Madame
Grand accompanied him; but her protector was an unfortunate man, whose
claims upon the French Government were dissipated by the Revolution, and
we lose sight of his friend altogether till her reappearance on the
theatre of the great world, after that event, as the companion of Madame
Beauharnais, and other celebrated women of that day. There is thus a
blank in her personal history of twenty-one years