uke of X----, Duke Victor's
father. She had left X----a few months after the elder Duke's demise,
had gone to Paris, as I heard, where some unprincipled adventurer
had married her for her money; but, however, had always retained her
quasi-royal title, and pretended, amidst the great laughter of the
Parisians who frequented her house, to the honours and ceremonial of a
sovereign's widow. She had a throne erected in her state-room, and was
styled by her servants and those who wished to pay court to her,
or borrow money from her, 'Altesse.' Report said she drank rather
copiously--certainly her face bore every mark of that habit, and
had lost the rosy, frank, good-humoured beauty which had charmed the
sovereign who had ennobled her.

Although she did not address me in the circle at Ranelagh, I was at this
period as well known as the Prince of Wales, and she had no difficulty
in finding my house in Berkeley Square; whither a note was next morning
despatched to me. 'An old friend of Monsieur de Balibari,' it stated
(in extremely bad French), 'is anxious to see the Chevalier again and
to talk over old happy times. Rosina de Liliengarten (can it be that
Redmond Balibari has forgotten her?) will be at her house in Leicester
Fields all the morning, looking for one who would never have passed her
by TWENTY YEARS ago.'

Rosina of Liliengarten it was indeed--such a full-blown Rosina I have
seldom seen. I found her in a decent first-floor in Leicester Fields
(the poor soul fell much lower afterwards) drinking tea, which had
somehow a very strong smell of brandy in it; and after salutations,
which would be more tedious to recount than they were to perform, and
after further straggling conversation, she gave me briefly the
following narrative of the events in X----, which I may well entitle the
'Princess's Tragedy.'

'You remember Monsieur de Geldern, the Police Minister. He was of Dutch
extraction, and, what is more, of a family of Dutch Jews. Although
everybody was aware of this blot in his scutcheon, he was mortally angry
if ever his origin was suspected; and made up for his fathers' errors
by outrageous professions of religion, and the most austere practices
of devotion. He visited church every morning, confessed once a week, and
hated Jews and Protestants as much as an inquisitor could do. He never
lost an opportunity of proving his sincerity, by persecuting one or the
other whenever occasion fell in his way.

'He hated the P