ns which Madame de Saint-Dizier had
suffered for the Good Cause were entered to her credit, and she acquired
even then very considerable influence, in spite of the lightness of her
behavior. The Marquis d'Aigrigny, having entered the military service of
France, remained there. He was handsome, and of fashionable manners and
address. He had corresponded and conspired with the princess, without
knowing her; and these circumstances necessarily led to a close
connection between them.

Excessive self-love, a taste for exciting pleasures, aspirations
of hatred, pride, and lordliness, a species of evil sympathy, the
perfidious attraction of which brings together perverse natures without
mingling them, had made of the princess and the Marquis accomplices
rather than lovers. This connection, based upon selfish and bitter
feelings, and upon the support which two characters of this dangerous
temper could lend to each other against a world in which their spirit of
intrigue, of gallantry, and of contempt had made them many enemies, this
connection endured till the moment when, after his duel with General
Simon, the Marquis entered a religious house, without any one
understanding the cause of his unexpected and sudden resolution.

The princess, having not yet heard the hour of her conversion strike,
continued to whirl round the vortex of the world with a greedy, jealous,
and hateful ardor, for she saw that the last years of her beauty were
dying out.

An estimate of the character of this woman may be formed from the
following fact:

Still very agreeable, she wished to close her worldly and volatile
career with some brilliant and final triumph, as a great actress knows
the proper time to withdraw from the stage so as to leave regrets
behind. Desirous of offering up this final incense to her own vanity,
the princess skillfully selected her victims. She spied out in the world
a young couple who idolized each other; and, by dint of cunning and
address, she succeeded in taking away the lover from his mistress, a
charming woman of eighteen, by whom he was adored. This triumph being
achieved, Madame Saint-Dizier retired from the fashionable world in the
full blaze of her exploit. After many long conversations with the Abbe
Marquis d'Aigrigny, who had become a renowned preacher, she departed
suddenly from Paris, and spent two years upon her estate near Dunkirk,
to which she took only one of her female attendants, viz., Mrs. Grivois.

W