g to a corner of the room; where he would remain huddled
together, and apparently stupefied and motionless, till the count
quitted the apartment.

At the moment of my writing this, Zamor still resides under my roof.
During the years he has passed with me he has gained in height, but
in none of the intellectual qualities does he seem to have made any
progress; age has only stripped him of the charms of infancy without
supplying others in their place; nor can I venture to affirm, that his
gratitude and devotion to me are such as I have reason to expect they
should be;* for I can with truth affirm, that I have never ceased to
lavish kindness on him, and to be, in every sense of the word, a good
mistress to him.

* This wretch, whom the comtesse du Barry loaded with her
favours and benefits, conducted her to the scaffold.--EDITOR
(i.e., author)

There was one member of my establishment, however, whom I preferred
to either Dorine or Zamor and this was Henriette, who was sincerely
attached to me, and who, for that very reason, was generally disliked
throughout the castle. I bad procured a good husband for her, on whom I
bestowed a post which, by keeping both himself and his wife in the
close vicinity of the castle, prevented my kind friend from quitting
me. However, my poor Henriette was not fated to enjoy a long connubial
felicity, for her husband, being seized with a violent fever, in a fit
of delirium threw himself from a window into the court below, and was
taken up dead. Slander availed herself even of this fatal catastrophe
to whisper abroad, that the death of the unhappy man arose from his deep
sense of his wife's misconduct and infidelity. This I can positively
assert was not the case, for Henriette was warmly and truly attached
to him, and conducted herself as a wife with the most undeviating
propriety. The fact was, that Henriette had drawn upon herself a
general hatred and ill will, because she steadily refused all gossiping
invitations, where my character would have been pulled to pieces, and
the affairs of my household discussed and commented upon: there, indeed,
she had sinned beyond all hope of pardon.

She it was who pointed out to me the perfidious conduct of the duc de
Villeroi. This gentleman, from the very beginning of my rise in the
royal favour, had demonstrated the most lively friendship for me, of
which he sought to persuade me by the strongest protestations, which,
weak and credulo