ng to a wedded life which brought nothing
but unhappiness with it and which gave to the world some of the most
degenerate women (in addition to a son who was almost an idiot) who have
ever been cradled.

The first of these degenerates was Marie Elizabeth, who was born one
August day in the year 1695, and who from her earliest infancy was her
father's pet and favourite. His idolatry of his first-born child,
indeed, is one of the most inscrutable things in a life full of the
abnormal, and in later years afforded much material for the tongue of
scandal. He was inseparable from her; her lightest wish was law to him;
he nursed her through her childish illnesses with more than the devotion
of a mother; and, as she grew to girlhood, he worshipped at the shrine
of her young beauty with the adoration of a lover and put her charms on
canvas in the guise of a pagan goddess.

The Duc's affection for his daughter, indeed, was so extravagant that
it was made the subject of scores of scurrilous lampoons to which even
Voltaire contributed, and was a delicious morsel of ill-natured gossip
in all the _salons_ and cabarets of Paris. At fifteen the princess was
already a woman--tall, handsome, well-formed, with brilliant eyes and
the full lips eloquent of a sensuous nature. Already she had had her
initiation into the vices that proved her undoing; for in a Court noted
for its free-living, she was known for her love of the table and the
wine-bottle.

Such was the Duc's eldest daughter when she was ripe for the altar and
became the object of an intrigue in which her scheming father, the Royal
Duchesses, the Duc de Saint-Simon, the King himself, and the Jesuits all
took a part, and the prize of which was the hand of the young Duc de
Berry, a younger son of the Dauphin, the grandson of King Louis.

Over the plotting and counterplotting, the rivalries and jealousies
which followed, we must pass. It must suffice to record that the King's
consent was at last won by the Orleans faction; Madame de Maintenon was
persuaded to smile on the alliance; and, one July day, the nuptials of
the Duc de Berry and the Orleans Princess were celebrated in the
presence of the Royal family and the Court. A regal supper followed;
and, the last toast drunk, the young couple were escorted to their room
with all the stately, if scarcely decent, ceremonial which in those days
inaugurated the life of the newly-wedded.

Seldom has there been a more singular union tha