able to attach to his name a certain

celebrity.

In the notes which accompany this story extracts are given from the Memoirs of the Prince de Ligne, those of St. Simon, and M. Sainte-Beuve's Essay, which will serve to put the reader in possession, should his memory not recall them, of the principal historical features of M. de Bonneval's extraordinary career. In order justly to appreciate the character of his wife, it is necessary to be acquainted with the history of the extraordinary man on whom she bestowed a heart that never faltered

in its allegiance. Her letters are full of beauties of thought and expression, and marked by touches of deep feeling, which would have deserved an abler translator, and a more skilful interpreter.

It only remains to be added that this

work was originally written in French, and published in Paris. Several alterations

have been made in this English Edition. Passages have been remodelled in order to adapt them to the genius of the language, and considerable additions have been introduced into the narrative.

THE COUNTESS DE BONNEVAL.

First Chapter.

"ROMANTIC, tender, visionary, mild,
Affectionate, reflecting, when a child,
With fear instinctive she from harshness fled,
And gentle tears for all who suffered shed.
Tales of misfortune touched her generous heart,
Of maidens left, or lovers forced to part.
Arabian nights' and Persian tales she read,
With long romances, with adventures fed

Her stirring thoughts, and dreamed of warlike fights
Of captive heroes, and victorious knights."-CRAbbe.

"The gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows;
They are polluted offerings."-SHAKESPEARE.

"A fool with more of wit than half mankind;

Blest with each gift of nature and of art,

And wanting nothing but an honest heart."-Dryden.

IN the bosom of a brilliant, refined, but licentious society, in one of the aristocratic mansions of that Paris of the eighteenth cen

VOL. I.

B

tury, which, thanks to the memoirs and letters of the time, we feel so intimately acquainted with, a few years before the death of Lewis the Fourteenth, was born Judithe Charlotte de Gontaut, third daughter of the Marquis de Biron, and of Marie Antoinette de Nogent, niece of the eccentric Duc de Lauzun. Fénélon was related to her family, and the Duc de St. Simon was her father's dearest friend.

The noblest houses of France were connected by birth or by marriage with that of the Gontaut Birons, itself one of the most illustrious in the kingdom. Almost all the celebrities of that period, old marshals, worn out by the campaigns of the grand monarque, statesmen in the full flush of courtly favour, literary men of every grade, from the author of "Athalie" down to the writer of the latest lampoon, the loveliest women of the day, the professed wit, and the incipient poet, congregated in the salons, and formed the society of the Hotel de Biron.