Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud (Being secret letters from a gentleman at Paris to a nobleman in London) — Volume 4 by Stewarton
page 48 of 53 (90%)
page 48 of 53 (90%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
|
sacrificed. In her trunk were found several trinkets belonging to her
master, which she honestly had appropriated to herself. His miscalculation on this subject the Count could not but avow; he added, however, that it was the entire fault of his friend, who had duped him with regard to the sex. Madame de C----n was, on account of her physiognomy, purchased by her late husband, then travelling in Turkey, from a merchant of Circassian slaves, when she was under seven years of age, and sent for her education to a relative of the Count, an Abbess of a convent in Languedoc. On his return from Turkey, some years afterwards, he took her under his own care, and she accompanied him all over Asia, and returned first to France in 1796, where her husband's name was upon the list of emigrants, though he had not been in Europe for ten years before the Revolution. However, by some pecuniary arrangements with Barras, he recovered his property, which he did not long enjoy, for he died in 1798. The suitors of Madame de C----n, mistress of a large fortune, with some remnants of beauty and elegance of manners, have been numerous, and among them several Senators and generals, and even the Minister Chaptal. But she has politely declined all their offers, preferring her liberty and the undisturbed right of following her own inclination to the inconvenient ties of Hymen. A gentleman, whom she calls, and who passes for, her brother, Chevalier de M de T----, a Knight of Malta, assists her in doing the honours of her house, and is considered as her favourite lover; though report and the scandalous chronicle say that she bestows her favours on every person who wishes to bestow on her his name, and that, therefore, her gallants are at least as numerous as her suitors. Such is the true statement of the past, as well as the present, with |
|


