APTER XVIII

Intrigue of the comtesse d'Egmont with a shopman--His
unhappy fate--The comtesse du Barry protects him--Conduct of
Louis XV upon the occasion--The young man quits France--
Madame du Barry's letter to the comtesse d'Egmont--Quarrel
with the marechal de Richelieu

The comtesse d'Egmont was one day observed to quit her house attired
with the most parsimonious simplicity; her head being covered by an
enormously deep bonnet, which wholly concealed her countenance, and the
rest of her person enveloped in a pelisse, whose many rents betrayed its
long service. In this strange dress she traversed the streets of Paris
in search of adventures. She was going, she said, wittily enough, "to
return to the cits what her father and brother had so frequently robbed
them of." Chance having led her steps to the rue St. Martin, she was
stopped there by a confusion of carriages, which compelled her first to
shelter herself against the wall, and afterwards to take refuge in an
opposite shop, which was one occupied by a linen-draper.

She looked around her with the eye of a connoisseur, and perceived
beneath the modest garb of a shopman one of those broad-shouldered
youths, whose open smiling countenance and gently tinged complexion
bespoke a person whose simplicity of character differed greatly from the
vast energy of his physical powers: he resembled the Farnese Hercules
upon a reduced scale. The princess approached him, and requested to see
some muslins, from which she selected two gowns, and after having paid
for them, requested the master of the shop to send his shopman with
them, in the course of half an hour, to an address she gave as her usual
abode.

The comtesse d'Egmont had engaged an apartment on the third floor of
a house in the rue Tiquetonne, which was in the heart of Paris. The
porteress of the dwelling knew her only as madame Rossin: her household
consisted of a housekeeper and an old man, both devoted to a mistress
whose character they well understood, and to whom they had every motive
to be faithful.

Here it was, then, that the lady hastened to await the arrival of the
new object of her plebeian inclinations. Young Moireau (for such was
the shopman's name) was not long ere he arrived with his parcel. Madame
d'Egmont was ready to receive him: she had had sufficient time to
exchange her shabby walking dress for one which bespoke both coquetry
and voluptuousness; the softness of he