Desirous of offering up this final incense to her own vanity, the princess skillfully selected her victims.She spied out in the world a young couple who idolized each other; and, by dint of cunning and address, she succeeded in taking away the lover from his mistress, a charming woman of eighteen, by whom he was adored.This triumph being achieved, Madame Saint-Dizier retired from the fashionable world in the full blaze of her exploit.After many long conversations with the Abbe-
Marquis d'Aigrigny, who had become a renowned preacher, she departed suddenly from Paris, and spent two years upon her estate near Dunkirk, to which she took only one of her female attendants, viz., Mrs.Grivois.
When the princess afterwards returned to Paris, it was impossible to recognize the frivolous, intriguing, and dissipated woman she had formerly been.The metamorphosis was as complete as it was extraordinary and even startling.Saint-Dizier House, heretofore open to the banquets and festivals of every kind of pleasure, became gloomily silent and austere.Instead of the world of elegance and fashion, the princess now received in her mansion only women of ostentatious piety, and men of consequence, who were remarkably exemplary by the extravagant rigor of their religious and monarchial principles.Above all, she drew around her several noted members of the higher orders of the clergy.She was appointed patroness of a body of religious females.She had her own confessor, chaplin, almoner, and even spiritual director; but this last performed his functions in partibus.The Marquis-Abbe d'Aigrigny continued in reality to be her spiritual guide; and it is almost unnecessary to say that for a long time past their mutual relations as to flirting had entirely ceased.
This sudden and complete conversion of a gay and distinguished woman, especially as it was loudly trumpeted forth, struck the greater number of persons with wonder and respect.Others, more discerning, only smiled.
A single anecdote, from amongst a thousand, will suffice to show the alarming influence and power which the princess had acquired since her affiliation with the Jesuits.This anecdote will also exhibit the deep, vindictive, and pitiless character of this woman, whom Adrienne de Cardoville had so imprudently made herself ready to brave.
Amongst the persons who smiled more or less at the conversion of Madame de Saint-Dizier were the young and charming couple whom she had so cruelly disunited before she quitted forever the scenes of revelry in which she had lived.The young couple became more impassioned and devoted to each other than ever; they were reconciled and married, after the passing storm which had hurled them asunder; and they indulged in no other vengeance against the author of their temporary infelicity than that of mildly jesting at the pious conversion of the woman who had done them so much injury.
Some time after, a terrible fatality overtook the loving pair.The husband, until then blindly unsuspicious, was suddenly inflamed by anonymous communications.A dreadful rupture ensued, and the young wife perished.
As for the husband, certain vague rumors, far from distinct, yet pregnant with secret meanings, perfidiously contrived, and a thousand times more detestable than formal accusations, which can, at least, be met and destroyed, were strewn about him with so much perseverance, with a skill so diabolical, and by means and ways so very various, that his best friends, by little and little, withdrew themselves from him, thus yielding to the slow, irresistible influence of that incessant whispering and buzzing, confused as indistinct, amounting to some such results as this--
"Well! you know!" says one.
"No!" replies another.
"People say very vile things about him."
"Do they? really! What then?"
"I don't know! Bad reports! Rumors grievously affecting his honor!"
"The deuce! That's very serious.It accounts for the coldness with which he is now everywhere received!"
"I shall avoid him in future!"
"So will I," etc.
Such is the world, that very often nothing more than groundless surmises are necessary to brand a man whose very, happiness may have incurred envy.So it was with the gentleman of whom we speak.The unfortunate man, seeing the void around him extending itself,--feeling (so to speak)
the earth crumbling from beneath his feet, knew not where to find or grasp the impalpable enemy whose blows he felt; for not once had the idea occurred to him of suspecting the princess, whom he had not seen since his adventure with her.Anxiously desiring to learn why he was so much shunned and despised, he at length sought an explanation from an old friend; but he received only a disdainfully evasive answer; at which, being exasperated, he demanded satisfaction.His adversary replied--"If you can find two persons of our acquaintance, I will fight you!" The unhappy man could not find one!
Finally, forsaken by all, without having ever obtained an explanation of the reason for forsaking him--suffering keenly for the fate of the wife whom he had lost, he became mad with grief, rage, and despair, and killed himself.
On the day of his death, Madame de Saint-Dizier remarked that it was fit and necessary that one who had lived so shamefully should come to an equally shameful end, and that he who had so long jested at all laws, human and divine, could not seemly otherwise terminate his wretched life than by perpetrating a last crime--suicide! And the friends of Madame de Saint-Dizier hawked about and everywhere repeated these terrible words with a contrite air, as if beatified and convinced! But this was not all.Along with chastisements there were rewards.
Observant people remarked that the favorites of the religious clan of Madame de Saint-Dizier rose to high distinction with singular rapidity.