views of his friend the Marquis de Lafayette, the hero of the American
Revolution, who as head of the French National Guard had been one of
the leaders of the July Revolution in Paris}

The reader may be certain that my imagination was all alive to
conjecture the circumstances which had brought Adrienne de la
Rocheaimard to Paris, and why she had been so assiduous in searching
me out, in particular. Could it be that the grateful girl still intended to
make her offering to the Duchesse de d'Angouleme? Ah! no--that
princess was in exile; while her sister was forming weak plots in behalf
of her son, which a double treachery was about to defeat. I have
already hinted that pocket-handkerchiefs do not receive and
communicate ideas, by means of the organs in use among human beings.
They possess a clairvoyance that is always available under favorable
circumstances. In their case the mesmeritic trance may be said to be
ever in existence, while in the performance of their proper functions. It is
only while crowded into bales, or thrust into drawers for the vulgar
purposes of trade, that this instinct is dormant, a beneficent nature
scorning to exercise her benevolence for any but legitimate objects. I
now mean legitimacy as connected with cause and effect, and nothing
political or dynastic.

{Duchesse d'Angouleme = Marie Therese Charlotte, the Dauphine,
Adrienne's patron; her sister = her sister-in-law Marie Caroline,
Duchesse de Berry, who led an unsuccessful revolt against the new
regime}

By virtue of this power, I had not long been held in the soft hand of
Adrienne, or pressed against her beating heart, without becoming the
master of all her thoughts, as well as her various causes of hope and