friend, who had duped him
with regard to the sex.

Madame de C----n was, on account of her physiognomy, purchased by her
late husband, then travelling in Turkey, from a merchant of Circassian
slaves, when she was under seven years of age, and sent for her education
to a relative of the Count, an Abbess of a convent in Languedoc. On his
return from Turkey, some years afterwards, he took her under his own
care, and she accompanied him all over Asia, and returned first to France
in 1796, where her husband's name was upon the list of emigrants, though
he had not been in Europe for ten years before the Revolution.

However, by some pecuniary arrangements with Barras, he recovered his
property, which he did not long enjoy, for he died in 1798. The suitors
of Madame de C----n, mistress of a large fortune, with some remnants of
beauty and elegance of manners, have been numerous, and among them
several Senators and generals, and even the Minister Chaptal. But she
has politely declined all their offers, preferring her liberty and the
undisturbed right of following her own inclination to the inconvenient
ties of Hymen. A gentleman, whom she calls, and who passes for, her
brother, Chevalier de M de T----, a Knight of Malta, assists her in doing
the honours of her house, and is considered as her favourite lover;
though report and the scandalous chronicle say that she bestows her
favours on every person who wishes to bestow on her his name, and that,
therefore, her gallants are at least as numerous as her suitors.

Such is the true statement of the past, as well as the present, with
regard to Madame de C----n. She relates, however, a different story. She
says that she is the daughter of the Marquis de M de T-----, of a
Languedoc family; that she sailed, when a child, with her mother in a
felucca from Nice to Malta, there to visit her brother; was captured by
an Algerine pilot, separated from her mother, and carried to
Constantinople by a merchant of slaves; there she was purchased by Comte
de C----n, who restored her to her family, and whom, therefore,
notwithstanding the difference of their ages, she married from gratitude.
This pretty, romantic story is ordered in our Court circles to be
officially believed; and, of course, is believed by nobody, not even by
the Emperor and Empress themselves, who would not give her the place of a
lady-in-waiting, though her request was accompanied with a valuable
diamond to the latter. Th