ted the shrieking head of Olivia from the
miserable sinful body. May Heaven have mercy upon her soul!'

*****

This was the story told by Madame de Liliengarten, and the reader will
have no difficulty in drawing from it that part which affected myself
and my uncle; who, after six weeks of arrest, were set at liberty, but
with orders to quit the duchy immediately: indeed, with an escort of
dragoons to conduct us to the frontier. What property we had, we were
allowed to sell and realise in money; but none of our play debts were
paid to us: and all my hopes of the Countess Ida were thus at an end.

When Duke Victor came to the throne, which he did when, six months
after, apoplexy carried off the old sovereign his father, all the good
old usages of X----were given up,--play forbidden; the opera and ballet
sent to the right-about; and the regiments which the old Duke had
sold recalled from their foreign service: with them came my Countess's
beggarly cousin the ensign, and he married her. I don't know whether
they were happy or not. It is certain that a woman of such a poor spirit
did not merit any very high degree of pleasure.

The now reigning Duke of X----himself married four years after his first
wife's demise, and Geldern, though no longer Police Minister, built the
grand house of which Madame de Liliengarten spoke. What became of
the minor actors in the great tragedy, who knows? Only MONSIEUR DE
STRASBOURG was restored to his duties. Of the rest--the Jew, the
chamber-woman, the spy on Magny--I know nothing. Those sharp tools with
which great people cut out their enterprises are generally broken in the
using: nor did I ever hear that their employers had much regard for them
in their ruin.

CHAPTER XIII. I CONTINUE MY CAREER AS A MAN OF FASHION

I find I have already filled up many scores of pages, and yet a vast
deal of the most interesting portion of my history remains to be told,
viz. that which describes my sojourn in the kingdoms of England and
Ireland, and the great part I played there; moving among the most
illustrious of the land, myself not the least distinguished of the
brilliant circle. In order to give due justice to this portion of my
Memoirs, then,--which is more important than my foreign adventures can
be (though I could fill volumes with interesting descriptions of the
latter),--I shall cut short the account of my travels in Europe, and of
my success at the Continental Courts, in order to speak