it by finishing with her at one
blow."

"She is at the Luxembourg?"

"I believe so."

"Let us go to the Luxembourg, monseigneur."

"You go with me?"

"I shall not leave you to-night."

"Well, drive to the Luxembourg."

CHAPTER II.

DECIDEDLY THE FAMILY BEGINS TO SETTLE DOWN.

Whatever the regent might say, the Duchesse de Berry was his favorite
daughter. At seven years of age she had been seized with a disease which
all the doctors declared to be fatal, and when they had abandoned her,
her father, who had studied medicine, took her in hand himself, and
succeeded in saving her.

From that time the regent's affection for his daughter became almost a
weakness. He allowed the haughty and self-willed child the most perfect
liberty; her education was neglected, but this did not prevent Louis
XIV. from choosing her as a wife for his grandson the Duc de Berry.

It is well known how death at once struck a triple blow at the royal
posterity, and within a few years carried off the dauphin, the Duc and
Duchesse de Bourgoyne and the Duc de Berry.

Left a widow at twenty years of age, loving her father almost as
tenderly as he loved her, and having to choose between the society of
Versailles and that of the Palais Royal, the Duchesse de Berry, young,
beautiful, and fond of pleasure, had quickly decided. She took part in
all the fetes, the pleasures and follies of her father.

The Duc d'Orleans, in his increasing fondness for his daughter--who
already had six hundred thousand francs a year--allowed her four hundred
thousand francs more from his private fortune. He gave up the Luxembourg
to her, gave her a bodyguard, and at length, to the scandal of those who
advocated the old forms of etiquette, he merely shrugged his shoulders
when the Duchesse de Berry passed through Paris preceded by cymbals and
trumpets, and only laughed when she received the Venetian ambassador on
a throne, raised on three steps, which nearly embroiled France with the
republic of Venice.

About this time the Duchesse de Berry took a fancy to fall in love with
the Chevalier de Riom.

The Chevalier de Riom was a nephew or grand-nephew of the Duc de Lauzun,
who came to Paris in 1715 to seek his fortune, and found it at the
Luxembourg. Introduced to the princess by Madame de Mouchy, he soon
established the same influence over her as his uncle, the Duc de Lauzun,
had exercised over La Grande Mademoiselle fifty years before, and was
soon e