rm by her versatility.

Another figure flits in and out of this salon, whose fine qualities
of soul shine so brightly in this morally stifling atmosphere that one
forgets her errors in a mastering impulse of love and pity. There is no
more pathetic history in this arid and heartless age than that of Mlle.
Aisse, the beautiful Circassian, with the lustrous, dark, Oriental
eyes, who was brought from Constantinople in infancy by the French
envoy, and left as a precious heritage to Mme. de Ferriol, the
intriguing sister of Mme. de Tencin, and her worthy counterpart, if
not in talent, in the faults that darkened their common womanhood. This
delicate young girl, surrounded by worldly and profligate friends, and
drawn in spite of herself into the errors of her time, redeemed her
character by her romantic heroism, her unselfish devotion, and her
final revolt against what seemed to be an inexorable fate. The struggle
between her self-forgetful love for the knightly Chevalier d'Aydie
and her sensitive conscience, her refusal to cloud his future by a
portionless marriage, and her firmness in severing an unholy tie,
knowing that the sacrifice would cost her life, as it did, form an
episode as rare as it is tragical. But her exquisite personality, her
rich gifts of mind and soul, her fine intelligence, her passionate love,
almost consecrated by her pious but fatal renunciation, call up one
of the loveliest visions of the century--a vision that lingers in the
memory like a medieval poem.

Mme. de Tencin amused her later years b writing sentimental tales, which
were found among her papers after her death. These were classed with the
romances of Mme. de La Fayette. Speaking of the latter, La Harpe said,
"Only one other woman succeeded, a century later, in painting with
equal power the struggles of love and virtue." It is one of the curious
inconsistencies of her character, that her creations contained an
element which her life seems wholly to have lacked. Behind all her
faults of conduct there was clearly an ideal of purity and goodness. Her
stories are marked by a vividness and an ardor of passion rarely found
in the insipid and colorless romances of the preceding age. Her pictures
of love and intrigue and crime are touched with the religious enthusiasm
of the cloister, the poetry of devotion, the heroism of self-sacrifice.
Perhaps the dark and mysterious facts of her own history shaped
themselves in her imagination. Did the tragedy