a. The Duchesse de Perpignan was the last--(Madame D'Anville I
reserved for another day)--that virtuous and wise personage was in the
boudoir of reception. I glanced at the fatal door as I entered. I have
a great aversion, after any thing has once happened and fairly subsided,
to make any allusion to its former existence. I never, therefore, talked
to the Duchess about our ancient egaremens. I spoke, this morning,
of the marriage of one person, the death of another, and lastly, the
departure of my individual self.

"When do you go?" she said, eagerly.

"In two days: my departure will be softened, if I can execute any
commissions in England for Madame."

"None," said she; and then in a low tone (that none of the idlers, who
were always found at her morning levees, should hear), she added, "you
will receive a note from me this evening."

I bowed, changed the conversation, and withdrew. I dined in my own
rooms, and spent the evening in looking over the various billets-doux,
received during my sejour at Paris.

"Where shall I put all these locks of hair?" asked Bedos, opening a
drawer full.

"Into my scrap-book."

"And all these letters?"

"Into the fire."

I was just getting into bed when the Duchesse de Perpignan's note
arrived--it was as follows:--

"My dear Friend,

"For that word, so doubtful in our language, I may at least call you in
your own. I am unwilling that you should leave this country with those
sentiments you now entertain of me, unaltered, yet I cannot imagine any
form of words of sufficient magic to change them. Oh! if you knew how
much I am to be pitied; if you could look for one moment into this
lonely and blighted heart; if you could trace, step by step, the
progress I have made in folly and sin, you would see how much of what
you now condemn and despise, I have owed to circumstances, rather than
to the vice of my disposition. I was born a beauty, educated a beauty,
owed fame, rank, power to beauty; and it is to the advantages I have
derived from person that I owe the ruin of my mind. You have seen how
much I now derive from art I loathe myself as I write that sentence; but
no matter: from that moment you loathed me too. You did not take into
consideration, that I had been living on excitement all my youth, and
that in my maturer years I could not relinquish it. I had reigned by my
attractions, and I thought every art preferable to resigning my empire:
but in feeding my vanity, I had not