and throwing
herself at the feet of Victor Amadeus, who was then at Evian; thus
abandoning her husband, family, and country by a giddiness similar to
mine, which precipitation she, too, has found sufficient time and reason
to lament.

The king, who was fond of appearing a zealous promoter of the Catholic
faith, took her under his protection, and complimented her with a pension
of fifteen hundred livres of Piedmont, which was a considerable
appointment for a prince who never had the character of being generous;
but finding his liberality made some conjecture he had an affection for
the lady, he sent her to Annecy escorted by a detachment of his guards,
where, under the direction of Michael Gabriel de Bernex, titular bishop
of Geneva, she abjured her former religion at the Convent of the
Visitation.

I came to Annecy just six years after this event; Madam de Warrens was
then eight--and--twenty, being born with the century. Her beauty,
consisting more in the expressive animation of the countenance, than a
set of features, was in its meridian; her manner soothing and tender; an
angelic smile played about her mouth, which was small and delicate; she
wore her hair (which was of an ash color, and uncommonly beautiful) with
an air of negligence that made her appear still more interesting; she was
short, and rather thick for her height, though by no means disagreeably
so; but there could not be a more lovely face, a finer neck, or hands and
arms more exquisitely formed.

Her education had been derived from such a variety of sources, that it
formed an extraordinary assemblage. Like me, she had lost her mother at
her birth, and had received instruction as it chanced to present itself;
she had learned something of her governess, something of her father, a
little of her masters, but copiously from her lovers; particularly a M.
de Tavel, who, possessing both taste and information, endeavored to adorn
with them the mind of her he loved. These various instructions, not
being properly arranged, tended to impede each other, and she did not
acquire that degree of improvement her natural good sense was capable of
receiving; she knew something of philosophy and physic, but not enough to
eradicate the fondness she had imbibed from her father for empiricism and
alchemy; she made elixirs, tinctures, balsams, pretended to secrets, and
prepared magestry; while quacks and pretenders, profiting by her
weakness, destroyed her property among