to enjoy a long connubial felicity, for her husband, being seized
with a violent fever, in a fit of delirium threw himself from a
window into the court below, and was taken up dead. Slander
availed herself even of this fatal catastrophe to whisper abroad,
that the death of the unhappy man arose from his deep sense of
his wife's misconduct and infidelity. This I can positively assert
was not the case, for Henriette was warmly and truly attached to
him, and conducted herself as a wife with the most undeviating
propriety. The fact was, that Henriette had drawn upon herself a
general hatred and ill will, because she steadily refused all
gossiping invitations, where my character would have been pulled
to pieces, and the affairs of my household discussed and commented
upon: there, indeed, she had sinned beyond all hope of pardon.

She it was who pointed out to me the perfidious conduct of the
duc de Villeroi. This gentleman, from the very beginning of my
rise in the royal favour, had demonstrated the most lively friendship
for me, of which he sought to persuade me by the strongest
protestations, which, weak and credulous as I was, I implicitly
believed, until one day that Henriette, availing herself of my
being quite alone, let me into the secrets of my establishment
and furnished me with a key to the assiduities of M. de Villeroi.

Amongst the females in my service was one named Sophie, young,
beautiful both in face and form, of a sweet disposition, and every
way calculated to inspire the tender passion. M. de Villeroi felt
the full force of her charms, and became the whining, sighing
lover--her very shadow. Up to this period I had had no cause of
complaint against M. de Villeroi; and certainly I should not have
interfered with his plebeian flame had he not thought proper,