the table, with a contemptuous air, a little cross
of green and white stones. I looked at it and said, "That is
not to be despised." I put it on, and admired it greatly. The
Count begged me to accept it. I refused--he urged me to take it.
Madame then refused it for me. At length, he pressed it upon me
so warmly that Madame, seeing that it could not be worth above
forty louis, made me a sign to accept it. I took the cross, much
pleased at the Count's politeness and, some days after, Madame
presented him with an enamelled box, upon which was the portrait
of some Grecian sage (whose name I don't recollect), to whom
she compared him. I shewed the cross to a jeweller, who valued
it at sixty-five louis. The Count offered to bring Madame some
enamel portraits, by Petitot, to look at, and she told him to
bring them after dinner, while the King was hunting. He shewed
his portraits, after which Madame said to him, "I have heard a
great deal of a charming story you told two days ago, at supper,
at M. le Premier's, of an occurrence you witnessed fifty or sixty
years ago." He smiled and said, "It is rather long." "So much
the better," said she, with an air of delight. Madame de Gontaut
and the ladies came in, and the door was shut; Madame made a
sign to me to sit down behind the screen. The Count made many
apologies for the ennui which his story would, perhaps, occasion.
He said, "Sometimes one can tell a story pretty well; at other
times it is quite a different thing."

"At the beginning of this century, the Marquis de St. Gilles
was Ambassador from Spain to the Hague. In his youth he had been
particularly intimate with the Count of Moncade, a grandee of
Spain, and one of the richest nobles of that country. Some months
after the Marquis's arrival at the Hague, he received a letter
from the Count, entreating him, in the name of their former
friendship, to render him the greatest possible service. 'You
know,' said he, 'my dear Marquis, the mortification I felt that
the name of Moncade was likely to expire with me. At length, it
pleased heaven to hear my prayers, and to grant me a son: he
gave early promise of dispositions worthy of his birth, but he,
some time since, formed an unfortunate and disgraceful attachment
to the most celebrated actress of the company of Toledo. I shut my
eyes to this imprudence on the part of a young man whose conduct
had, till then, caused me unmingled satisfaction. But, having learnt
that he was so bli