comed in the very highest circles.
Almost at once he attracted the notice of the Princesse de Conti, a
beautiful woman of the blood royal. Of her it has been said that she
was "the personification of a kiss, the incarnation of an embrace, the
ideal of a dream of love." Her chestnut hair was tinted with little
gleams of gold. Her eyes were violet black. Her complexion was
dazzling. But by the king's orders she had been forced to marry a
hunchback--a man whose very limbs were so weakened by disease and evil
living that they would often fail to support him, and he would fall to
the ground, a writhing, screaming mass of ill-looking flesh.

It is not surprising that his lovely wife should have shuddered much at
his abuse of her and still more at his grotesque endearments. When her
eyes fell on Maurice de Saxe she saw in him one who could free her from
her bondage. By a skilful trick he led the Prince de Conti to invade
the sleeping-room of the princess, with servants, declaring that she
was not alone. The charge proved quite untrue, and so she left her
husband, having won the sympathy of her own world, which held that she
had been insulted. But it was not she who was destined to win and hold
the love of Maurice de Saxe.

Not long after his appearance in the French capital he was invited to
dine with the "Queen of Paris," Adrienne Lecouvreur. Saxe had seen her
on the stage. He knew her previous history. He knew that she was very
much of a soiled dove; but when he met her these two natures, so
utterly dissimilar, leaped together, as it were, through the
indescribable attraction of opposites. He was big and powerful; she was
small and fragile. He was merry, and full of quips and jests; she was
reserved and melancholy. Each felt in the other a need supplied.

At one of their earliest meetings the climax came. Saxe was not the man
to hesitate; while she already, in her thoughts, had made a full
surrender. In one great sweep he gathered her into his arms. It
appeared to her as if no man had ever laid his hand upon her until that
moment. She cried out:

"Now, for the first time in my life, I seem to live!"

It was, indeed, the very first love which in her checkered career was
really worthy of the name. She had supposed that all such things were
passed and gone, that her heart was closed for ever, that she was
invulnerable; and yet here she found herself clinging about the neck of
this impetuous soldier and showing him all the