our
triumphs greatly dashed by the perusal of the letter. 'Has Magny,' we
asked, 'robbed the Jew, or has his intrigue been discovered?' In either
case, my claims on the Countess Ida were likely to meet with serious
drawbacks: and I began to feel that my 'great card' was played and
perhaps lost.

Well, it WAS lost: though I say, to this day, it was well and gallantly
played. After supper (which we never for fear of consequences took
during play) I became so agitated in my mind as to what was occurring
that I determined to sally out about midnight into the town, and inquire
what was the real motive of Magny's apprehension. A sentry was at the
door, and signified to me that I and my uncle were under arrest.

We were left in our quarters for six weeks, so closely watched that
escape was impossible, had we desired it; but, as innocent men, we had
nothing to fear. Our course of life was open to all, and we desired and
courted inquiry. Great and tragical events happened during those six
weeks; of which, though we heard the outline, as all Europe did, when we
were released from our captivity, we were yet far from understanding all
the particulars, which were not much known to me for many years after.
Here they are, as they were told me by the lady, who of all the world
perhaps was most likely to know them. But the narrative had best form
the contents of another chapter.

CHAPTER XII. TRAGICAL HISTORY OF PRINCESS OF X----

More than twenty years after the events described in the past chapters,
I was walking with my Lady Lyndon in the Rotunda at Ranelagh. It was in
the year 1790; the emigration from France had already commenced, the
old counts and marquises were thronging to our shores: not starving and
miserable, as one saw them a few years afterwards, but unmolested as
yet, and bringing with them some token of their national splendour.
I was walking with Lady Lyndon, who, proverbially jealous and always
anxious to annoy me, spied out a foreign lady who was evidently
remarking me, and of course asked who was the hideous fat Dutchwoman who
was leering at me so? I knew her not in the least. I felt I had seen the
lady's face somewhere (it was now, as my wife said, enormously fat and
bloated); but I did not recognise in the bearer of that face one who had
been among the most beautiful women in Germany in her day.

It was no other than Madame de Liliengarten, the mistress, or as some
said the morganatic wife, of the old D