ificent brother as a moth from a star. There was, on the face of
things, every reason why the great and all-powerful Cardinal should
leave his nieces to their genteel poverty; and we can imagine both the
astonishment and delight with which Madame Mancini received the summons
to Paris which meant such a revolution in life for her and her
daughters.

If the Mancini girls had no heritage of money, they had at least the
dower of beauty. Each of the five gave promise of a rare
loveliness--with the solitary exception of Marie, Madame's third
daughter, who at fourteen was singularly unattractive even for that
awkward age. Tall, thin, and angular, without a vestige of grace either
of figure or movement, she had a sallow face out of which two great
black eyes looked gloomily, and a mouth wide and thin-lipped. She was,
in addition, shy and slow-witted to the verge of stupidity. Marie, in
fact, was quite hopeless, the "ugly duckling" of a good-looking family,
and for this reason an object of dislike and resentment to her mother.

Certainly, said Madame, Marie must be left behind. Her other daughters
would be a source of pride to their uncle; he could secure great matches
for them, but Marie--pah! she would bring discredit on the whole family.
And so it was decided in conclave that the "ugly duckling" should be
left in a nunnery--the only fit place for her. But Marie happily had a
spirit of her own. She would not be left behind, she declared; and if
she must go to a nunnery, why there were nunneries in plenty in France
to which they could send her. And Marie had her way.

She was not, however, to escape the cloister after all, for to a Paris
nunnery she was consigned when her Cardinal uncle had set eyes on her.
"Let her have a year or two there," was his verdict, "and, who knows,
she may blossom into a beauty yet. At any rate she can put on flesh and
not be the scarecrow she is." And thus, while her more favoured sisters
were revelling in the gaieties of Court life, Marie was sent to tell her
beads and to spend Spartan days among the nuns.

Nearly two years passed before Mazarin expressed a wish to see his ugly
niece again; and it was indeed a very different Marie who now made her
curtsy to him. Gone were the angular figure, the awkward movements, the
sallow face, the slow wits. Time and the healthy life of the cloisters
had done their work well. What the Cardinal now saw was a girl of
seventeen, of exquisitely modelled figure,