was mentioned, and the lovers continued to correspond, hoping that time
might effect a change in his Highness's resolutions; when, of a sudden,
the lieutenant was drafted into one of the regiments which the Prince
was in the habit of selling to the great powers then at war (this
military commerce was a principal part of his Highness's and other
princes' revenues in those days), and their connection was thus abruptly
broken off.

It was strange that the Princess Olivia should have taken this part
against a young lady who had been her favourite; for, at first, with
those romantic and sentimental notions which almost every woman has, she
had somewhat encouraged the Countess Ida and her penniless lover, but
now suddenly turned against them; and, from loving the Countess, as she
previously had done, pursued her with every manner of hatred which a
woman knows how to inflict: there was no end to the ingenuity of her
tortures, the venom of her tongue, the bitterness of her sarcasm and
scorn. When I first came to Court at X--, the young fellows there had
nicknamed the young lady the Dumme Grafinn, the stupid Countess. She
was generally silent, handsome, but pale, stolid-looking, and awkward;
taking no interest in the amusements of the place, and appearing in the
midst of the feasts as glum as the death's-head which, they say, the
Romans used to have at their tables.

It was rumoured that a young gentleman of French extraction, the
Chevalier de Magny, equerry to the Hereditary Prince, and present at
Paris when the Princess Olivia was married to him by proxy there, was
the intended of the rich Countess Ida; but no official declaration
of the kind was yet made, and there were whispers of a dark intrigue:
which, subsequently, received frightful confirmation.

This Chevalier de Magny was the grandson of an old general officer in
the Duke's service, the Baron de Magny. The Baron's father had quitted
France at the expulsion of Protestants after the revocation of the edict
of Nantes, and taken service in X--, where he died. The son succeeded
him, and, quite unlike most French gentlemen of birth whom I have known,
was a stern and cold Calvinist, rigid in the performance of his duty,
retiring in his manners, mingling little with the Court, and a close
friend and favourite of Duke Victor; whom he resembled in disposition.

The Chevalier his grandson was a true Frenchman; he had been born in
France, where his father held a diplomatic ap